


Just a Crosshair

by thinkatory



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Attempted Murder, BDSM, Brainwashing, Branding, Chameleon Arch (Doctor Who), Choking, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dubious Consent, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, F/M, Gallifrey, Gunplay, Hallucinations, Hate Sex, Identity Porn, Knifeplay, Major Character Death Results in Regeneration, Masochism, Mind Games, Minor Team TARDIS, Not Really Character Death, Obsession, Regeneration (Doctor Who), Rough Sex, Sadism, Stable Time Loop, Supernatural Illnesses, Time Travel, Timeline Shenanigans, Torture, Vaginal Fingering, Violent Sex, Violent Thoughts, a lot of attempted murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:13:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 43,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24432649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinkatory/pseuds/thinkatory
Summary: River Song, the Master, and the Doctor are entangled with each other.Death and regeneration don't stand a chance against that.
Relationships: Missy (Doctor Who)/Tasha Lem, River Song/Yana (Doctor Who), The Doctor/River Song, The Doctor/The Corsair, The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), The Master (Simm)/River Song, Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan & Graham O'Brien & Ryan Sinclair, Thirteenth Doctor/Missy, Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Kudos: 16





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I tagged everything because I'm posting this whole thing at once. Some notes:  
> 1 - There is no smut, no torture, and in general no dark content in this first chapter. That all kicks in next chapter and snowballs forward from there.  
> 2 - This is probably the least complicated chapter timeline-wise, which should tell you something.  
> 3 - The Doctor takes a bit to appear and longer to become relevant, but they'll get there. It's mostly Thirteen in this fic, FYI.  
> 4 - Eventually the epigraphs/scene starters go away, if that's a problem for you.  
> 5 - No one permanently dies in this story, so there's a lot of regeneration instead. I figured I should tag for death anyway, because technically there's death.  
> 6 - Wow, this is a lot of notes, but I should add. There's the extremely improbable chance you might recognize large chunks of this first chapter as a fic with the same title as this one! That was me, and the first draft of this fic written ten years ago. How far this fic has come, I tell you.

**Automatic transcript of audio diary of Prof Yana, 9.9/Yalta/80 (9.99345.12)**   
**There is so much to do, I can hardly think of sleep. Those who call themselves nurses and caretakers at the base declare I will work myself to death if I continue at this rate, but this project must move forward. Were there others with my skills, I might deign to rest. There is only me.**

In the last days of the universe, war runs rampant.

Yana is unlucky enough to be a brilliant man born to a people who cannot be convinced away from war. So – well, he's made weapons, for anyone willing to feed and clothe him. He wouldn't say he's proud of it, but he has made no secret of it, either. In these final days, pretensions and ideals aren't of much use.

He works on these machines of war, but in his heart, Yana has held a solemn wish each day: however impossible it might seem, perhaps humanity could put the survival of _all_ remaining beings before tribalism, before it's too late. One day, the moment will come when the whole universe folds neatly into nothing, and the last generation of sentient creatures will have spent their whole lives fighting like animals over territory for control of a universe which holds wonders they never got around to enjoying.

But there's no time for dreams when both sides insist on beating away at the war drums, with their never-ending beat. This is the indelible mark on the collective soul of humankind in particular, the inevitable conclusion – self-destruction.

However, neither philosophy nor morals are the purpose he's been set to.

Yana's been tasked with ending the war once and for all, no matter the price. It is, at once, both unsettling and thrilling to have such an opportunity, and leaves little time for things like conversation and levity.

He knows it should frighten him. It doesn't. The total destruction of the enemy is the task that keeps him fed, and is one he is more than capable of achieving. _Alone_ , as he always has been. "Set it down there," he says at the sound of the door opening, distracted at his makeshift chalkboard, his hand against his face as he thinks.

There is dead silence for a moment, not even the sound of a thoughtless attendant doing his or her job. He turns to face the intruder and it is most definitely no one he has ever met, which seems impossible.

As it happens, the woman standing there is _beautiful_ – more importantly, her army fatigues must predate 9.99 if he recalls his history, so she must be an eccentric as well. He doesn't realize he's staring until her eyebrows raise, her arms cross over her chest, and she tilts her head back to appraise him, blonde curls falling back against her neck as she sends him what might well be the most calculating look he's ever received.

"Well?" he retorts to that _look_ of hers, but the stiff tone he'd aimed for gives way to the confusion that's really the overwhelming feeling at the moment.

"Sorry," she says smoothly, and relaxes, if fractionally. She crosses the distance between them to shake his hand, her eyes never leaving his face, searching for something, who knows what. "Mistook you for someone else. I'm River Song."

"Quite good, Miss Song," he answers automatically, and turns his focus back to his calculations. "Well, carry on. Everyone has their duties."

"I'm with you," River Song says, plain as day, _teasing_ , and saunters to his side to examine his work. "Oh, you're a bad, _bad_ boy, aren't you?"

It's a rhetorical question, but his answer is stiff now, unamused. "I wouldn't say I'm a bad person."

"Oh, certainly not," she says, with a wry smile. "Should we get started?"

Yana forces himself to keep his gaze forward, to not get baited, though the temptation is rising. "On what?"

"This." She nods to the chalkboard.

"Do you understand what you're reading?" he asks mildly.

Her amusement is palpable. "Let's see."

Yana steps aside, and gestures for her to go on and get a closer look at his work. River appraises the scribbles on the chalkboard for a moment, and finally asks with more curiosity than judgment, "Do you have any particular reason to destroy half of what little's left of life in this universe?"

" _Tabula rasa_ ," he says, with too-common weary cynicism. "With all that this generation has seen, Miss Song, do you not think we deserve that much?"

She runs a fingertip underneath one of the equations. "That depends on the 'we'."

"It certainly does," Yana says, and ignores the apparent violation of this woman's eyes on his work. There are more than enough options if he wants to dispose of a spy, after all. "Go on then, clever girl. Tell me what I'm working on."

"You're trying to generate a delta wave," River says; her bluntness catches him, and he turns to find a plainly arrogant smile on her face as she goes on. "Don't know what you'd call it, but back in my day we called it Van Cassadyne energy – broadcast enough of it at the right frequency, it'll fry the brains of every living creature in its path. Of course, you'd have to turn off the shields on this entire base for two whole days to sustain enough energy to charge the wave. How do you plan to sort that?"

He turns away from her, at a loss, and snatches up his recorder. "You," he orders her, "get back to work."

"Sir," she answers briskly, and snaps the proper salute. He withdraws to his tiny office to record further notes, perhaps a little rattled by the presence of another good mind on the base.

* * *

**Automatic transcript of audio diary of Prof Yana, 9.9/Yalta/82 (9.99351.12)**   
**Theory behind weaponized delta wave is sound, but I am left to cobble together the necessary equipment from what little is left on the base. The conversion of the most basic electrical power we are capable of generating on base into Van Cassadyne energy seems beyond our capabilities at this time. We seem to be lacking something vital. Quite what is lacking is the question, and one we may be unable to answer.**

**The costs may be irreparable, but I was not courted into this position to surrender at the prospect of a challenge. I may not have a choice besides. This damnable woman seems determined to see this project through.**

**  
_I am, actually._   
**

**If it's not too much trouble, River? This _is_ my office.**

It's the stress of the impossible situation he's in. He finds himself out of breath, dazed, and filled to the brim with emotion with no provocation. Yana has always been a man of good humor and temperament, perhaps not often beloved, sometimes awkward or detached, but always warm enough.

Now, rage chokes him at inopportune moments. Fear clouds his mind and drives his heart into his throat, and it is River Song who manages to anchor him.

"Focus," she says, her hand tight around his wrist, her face stern and determined, but not enough to distract him yet.

"There's a legend," he says, and looks past her, at the carcasses of all the technology that came before them, cannibalized for this purpose. "About the man who split the atom."

"You're all the same," River says, the rare impatience flaring in her tone, and she puts her hands to his face and tilts his gaze to her. " _Look_ at me. Focus. Do you want to win?"

"He said 'I am become Death, Destroyer of Worlds'," he says to her radiant face, and he finds himself doubting whether she's real after all. Perhaps his mind has furnished the project with a brilliant, comely woman to drive him to complete the task he, the genius born in the wrong time, the end times, was born to accomplish: end the last of all wars, and bring mankind to Utopia. "Or so said the books, at one time."

She releases him, and then she smiles at him, something wild in her eyes. "Fine," she declares, and pulls him to his feet by the front of his shirt.

He recoils despite himself in the shock of it, stuttering out, "What – what is the meaning – "

"You need to eat, and sleep, and quite possibly even feel human." Her lips graze his cheek, her hand grazes his hip, and he doesn't protest, doesn't question, and doesn't allow himself to think twice. He brings her closer. Her body just barely touches him, fits against him. "Walk with me," she whispers.

"A walk," Yana says, faintly, and takes her hand in his. That seems simple enough. "Come along, then."

She takes him to bed after a quiet twenty-minute walk. As she rests her head against his shoulder, it all fits into place in his head.

He looks at River, who seems relatively content. "I know what we need to do," he says, softer, more gently than he's ever said anything.

"Another go?" But she clearly knows what he means.

He supposes he can joke, if she can. "If you want to celebrate."

She laughs, a sound that breaks the quiet. That's not necessarily a bad thing. "Before or after, it's your decision, sir."

"Before," Yana says swiftly, and kisses her on the mouth, more wanting than affectionate in that moment.

In the end, what he asks for them is a literal human cost. But what cost, these days, isn't human?

* * *

**Automatic transcript of audio diary of Prof Yana, 9.9/Yalta/89 (9.99360.12)**   
**It has been brought to my attention that this base may no longer be secure. However, Project Delta is deemed successful, with all enemy forces neutralized, so the Utopia Project has requested my aid in contacting and reaching colonists that likely no longer exist. The trip will be long, years or more, and no doubt full of trouble, but I have sought out and achieved larger challenges. At the very least I must truck no longer with death.**

Yana is silently contemplating his single trunk of belongings, his former lab, and the life to come, when he hears footsteps down the corridor. It is a sign that he should – really, must – move on, that his military training has him tensed with a hand on his gun at the mere thought of a visitor, even on his last day.

(Someone has been _listening to his recordings_.)

It's River. He hasn't seen her since yesterday, since the team came back and verified the destruction of the enemy. She wears black, her shoulders bared, and she stays so still, uncharacteristically careful, as though standing trial before an invisible judge. "You're going to do it," she says from the doorway, keeping her distance.

"River," he says weakly, overwhelmed by the vulnerability, the pain, in the unflappable River Song's face; is she frightened of him, of what he's done? "Come with me."

She smiles; it's sad, ashamed, somehow. "You don't need me. I've done what I came here to do."

_What is – I demand –_ The slow-burning rage he's tried so hard to fight has an outlet now. "I do," he retorts.

She tosses something in his direction. He catches it, barely, and looks at it: his pocketwatch. He's confused, furious, and his frustration grows with each second. Jokes and riddles at a time like this?

"I _know_ you are capable of anything," she says smoothly, tilts her head up in vague amusement, and turns to leave.

"River!" Yana shouts crossly, but she disappears into the corridor. He instantly bolts to catch her, not hearing her footsteps, certain she'll be forlornly waiting for him on the other side of the door, only to find the dimly-lit corridor empty as the day she first sauntered into his lab.

Unwisely, he punches the wall, his hand throbbing in time with the pulse in his head.

It's enough to make a man go mad.

* * *

**Transcript of attached TARDIS hologram file, TMT 21:38 1.3k23/4**   
**This is Emergency Programme Six. If you're seeing this, Doctor, it means you've probably stolen your TARDIS back and ruined my glorious paradox machine. Too bad – it was a _definite_ improvement.**

**The Doctor in the TARDIS, the Master defeated, the same old story, you and I: isn't it good? Oh, I missed it. The games, the intrigue, the women, the latex; I did love a good masquerade. They don't make masks like they used to, but it's so _easy_ to hide in plain sight with these people. 21st century; idiots, brilliant, useful idiots.**

**So, you destroyed Gallifrey _and_ the Daleks. Just the thought makes me tingle; I love to see the monster in you. PIty that after all that genocidal fun you've gotten terribly dull. Young woman after young woman, little sanitized adventures, everyone lives. Dreadful stuff.**

**But listen to me gab on. You're probably thinking, so sad, my dear friend suffering a crushing defeat at my hands again, if only I could turn his head to the light, instead of dooming him to some awful fate for a year or two before he inevitably escapes death again?**

**Just remember, Doctor: no matter what you do, I will always be a breath away from you.**

**See you soon. Ta.**

It is far too easy to get a job under Harold Saxon (or that's what the rumors say). Within two days, she's on the Valiant development team, with Lucy Cole Saxon hovering and clinging to her husband's arm as Mister Saxon orates senselessly to the tune of equally senseless applause.

River claps and smiles, and wonders what the others are hearing courtesy of the Archangel Network – if they're hearing anything at all.

To Saxon. The first, most obvious thing about him is the twitch: a rhythm of four against his thigh, the desks and tables, his foot absently tapping – an endless rhythm he's tapping out like some subconscious code he's desperately and constantly trying to get across.

The next, of course, are that he's charismatic as hell, and a bloody genius, not necessarily in that order.

"What did you say your name was?" he asks her as she's reassessing blueprints; he's more concerned with her bust than with her work, and all the better for it.

"Pond," she says, with the best subtle touch of a Scottish burr, and sends him a smile of servile humility. "Melody Pond."

(She was born too late, and meets everyone too early. Ironic, considering her penchant for good timing, but she supposes there must be a tradeoff.)

There's a full office around them, a crowd of scientists and engineers busy, anxious, and buzzing with conversation, but, for the first time in six relative years, no one stops or stares when she says her name aloud. It's almost a respite, or it would be if the envelope in her pocket would stop weighing so heavily on her mind.

He glances up from her breasts and her blueprints, bored, the same look as ever, and she exhales. "Right," he says to the room at large, "let's get on with it. Boys! Come along, I've got something to show you that you're going to _like_. Very exciting stuff..."

As Saxon goes on, everyone files out of the room, with Lucy Saxon the last one out, smiling and posing at the men with a bland sort of mania in her eyes. River stays behind, the TARDIS key's chain brushing against her neck as she thumbs it and swivels in her oh so wonderfully 21st century wheeled chair. Once the sound of footsteps fades, she pulls the envelope from her pocket, only departing once she's completely at the ready.

The envelope is TARDIS blue, the instructions in looped handwriting on cardstock, and she reads them once more, in case, as she stalks through the fiftieth floor of Archangel Tower. "I hate you sometimes," she says aloud, to the Doctor or the principle of the thing.

Sometimes it really feels like their timelines dovetail together so constantly that he's always there for her, with her, whether she wants him or not. Sometimes it seems like it's only her, and one madman or another with instructions, plans, or doomsday plots needing ending.

* * *

**Transcript of TARDIS console video feed, TMT 05:40 1.3k23/1**   
**[A rattling sound as footsteps sound across the control room's floor, pacing one direction and the next. Finally the pacing stops and a rhythm of four beats starts once, twice, three times against the console, strikingly loud in the hollow silence left in the absence of the TARDIS's hum. Then, he speaks in a hiss.]**

**So much to do, so much to do, nowhere to run, it is _my turn_ , my turn, Doctor.**

**[A knock on the TARDIS door breaks the silence. Footsteps strike confidently across the floor to the entrance.]**

**Is it time?**

**_Finally._ **

There's more truth in the book than anyone would imagine, but he's always been one for the cheap shot, the easy joke. Without the book he might never have found Lucy: someone serviceable, _maybe_ , but not someone as bright-eyed and keen and so incredibly _fun_.

She sees straight through him, and it's _good_. He knows immediately upon meeting her from the look in her eye that Archangel hasn't worked on her, but her gaze is on him, intrigued, wanting. Oh, very good.

His father never allowed him to have a pet. It's all very cathartic.

Lucy laughs when he says he'll show her the stars, and makes a joke about visiting the van Gogh collection (her favorite, of course). It's worth every Earth Girl moment of inanity when he shows her what he is, what he's done, and what he's going to do.

(She makes a sound when he touches her, when he pins her against the chair and makes her breath flutter in her chest; it's a whimper or a moan, trapped between terror, desire, and pleading. It's _perfect_.)

Basically, it works.

The problem is, _it's too simple_. It's working out _too well_ thus far, and he can practically hear the Doctor's voice (any number of them, at that) going on about sowing the seeds of his own destruction. The Doctor is out there, _doing something_. Archangel has never been 100 percent, and it might ( _might_ ) work on the Doctor, but there's not exactly a surfeit of Time Lords available at his beck and call to test it on.

It has to work. He's brilliant, and the Doctor is trapped at the end of the universe. Probably. He's just being paranoid.

Best to do background checks on everyone anyway. He makes a note of it, and rolls his eyes as his phone lights up. "Saxon," he answers dutifully.

"Sir," the woman on the other end returns with professional ease, "just ringing to confirm that the results of Project Citadel arrived in your inbox."

"Right, e-mail," the Master says, bemused, and flicks through a number of nonsense tabs to reach the right one. "There it is! Good on you – ah, Pond."

"Sir," she repeats, her flattered tone thick with amusement. "I do my duty for Queen and Country."

"As do we all," he says, instantly dismissive; patriotism may be useful, but it's boring. "But back to work with us all. I'll glance over it once I've time and get back to you about any continued interest Defence has in your project."

"I'll look quite forward to it, Mr. Saxon."

He contemplates her sultry tone, her teasing, and makes a mental note of the name. _M. Pond._ Clever, saucy, now all he needs is a look at her to decide how much fun this could be. "Carry on, then," he says, in one of his more masterful tones, and returns the phone to its receiver.

(It's getting louder. He finds moments disappearing into the sound of the drums, the sound of his heartbeat, but these stupid apes are easy to manage even through the rising mania. _It's getting louder_ , and he can taste the acidic start of panic and hysteria at the back of his throat each time the world gives way to the drums.)

Surprising enough that Project Citadel got funding, really, considering how mad the prospect was, but now it's got results that must have been faked, he has to figure; more than a handful of empires couldn't find Gallifrey with technology ten times the quality of Earth's, after all. And yet, once he's double-clicked the file and opened the photos…

It's nothing short of shocking that a lot of ruthless humans in _this_ timeframe managed to put together a telescope of this quality by stripping everything alien for parts and piecing it together like a madman's puzzle, nonetheless fixed it on the right location (with a few irrelevant locations to throw Torchwood off of the trail). Though the telescope is out of its depth and the pictures are blurry, the surrounding constellations are the ones that shone above his father's lands on Gallifrey, and no mistake.

As for Gallifrey, _nothing_. There's nothing.

The thought flashes through his mind before he can stifle it, crashing right through his blank fury – _what if you and the Doctor are all that's left?_ – and all he can hear is the rhythm of four, the heartbeat of a Time Lord, and perhaps of the last.

It can't be gone, the Daleks haven't won; the Daleks are _gone_. So then –

( _Coward, you ran, come on and fight, coward, you fool,_ the drumbeat rattles off to him.)

_No._ It's not his fault. The Doctor is the one who saves the world; he's saved the Time Lords before, time and time again, but what use is he if he picks pretty _human girls_ and handsome captains as though humanity of all races deserves mercy more than Gallifrey itself –

No. None of that. Not right now. He bites back the rage.

Nothing to do but work with what he's got.

"Keep calm and carry on," the Master murmurs, all sarcasm, and entertains himself with another children's show on yet another browser tab as he begins to doodle and brainstorm in Gallifreyan on a legal pad.

"Harry," Lucy calls lightly, sidling inside his office, "I thought you might – oh, _Harry_ , are you all right?"

Her concern is touching, but _really_. He doesn't even look up.

"Sit," he orders her, offhand, and she does, with her sly look, like she hopes he'll take her right on the desk. "Onto the next, my love."

* * *

**Transcript from Valiant security feed Rm 24, GMT 01:22:45 05/01/2009**   
**[There is a faint whimpering in the background of the feed. Thirty seconds in, just as one might dismiss it as their imagination, there is the clear, broken sound of sobbing, and a panicked effort seconds later to restrain the outburst back into silence.]**

**WOMAN: It doesn't have to be like this.**

**LUCY: You don't understand. I'm his wife – his _queen_. He needs me.**

**WOMAN: Like a dog needs his bone, by the look of it.**

**LUCY: (sharply) What would you know?**

**WOMAN: I know that you deserve better. I know that you know that, too.**

**LUCY: You don't get to speak to me this way, you – _Song_ – **

**WOMAN: (bluntly) I've come on behalf of your father.**

**LUCY: (shocked silence) I –**

**WOMAN: You know what you have to do. Yes? (LUCY doesn't answer; the only sound is of the WOMAN clipping gauze with a pair of medical scissors, and LUCY's sharp breath inward.) Clever girl.**

It's been two relative years since the first envelope arrived from the Doctor on this apparently endless mission, and six months since Lucy Saxon killed the Master.

( _I killed him, but he's still here,_ Lucy whispered through the bars of Broadfell Containment Facility. _He's in my head, every night. He's never left, and he'll never die, even after all he's done. Why does he survive when everyone else dies? What gives him the right?_ )

The Doctor hovers in River's mind as she puts the last envelope with the others. She thinks of him as she escapes through time and space for the shortest break, in a fine suite in a good hotel on the pleasure planet Presa. She dreams of the Doctor, any Doctor, touching her shoulders and kissing her forehead, thanking her sincerely for her work – an embarrassing thing she would never in her life admit would mean anything to her. They've met on and off in the midst of the flurry of TARDIS blue envelopes, but the version of the Doctor who's sending them is keeping his distance.

She aches for him, physically. She dreams of meeting him just so she can tell him off, know he's listening and actually knows how he's wronged her, so she can smack the taste from his mouth. She wants to feel her footsteps on the TARDIS floors and know that she's home.

After two days and a fair dose of distraction, another envelope arrives for her, as though summoned by her thoughts.

_Merry Christmas, River! (Did I mention it's Christmas?) I have a present:_

  

  1.   
_The Pilzer Docks on Morphia, pier 28, common time. They'll have what you need waiting for you._  

  

  2.   
_I need you to go home for me._  

  

  3.   
_Inputs and instructions are on the back. Don't change anything._  

  

  4.   
_You'll know what to do when you get there._  

  

  5.   
_Stay gorgeous._  

  



It's the Doctor. Of course he has to be ridiculous.

Getting to Morphia isn't a problem (it's nearby; the Doctor must have known), and stealing the ship at Pier 28 is just as easy; the owner gets a dose of hallucinogenic lipstick and goes about his way.

River has a feeling that this ship didn't properly belong to the "owner" on Morphia anyway, so she doesn't feel too badly about taking it. It's not like any ship she's been on, but she can fly just about anything, and she decides to save any real investigation until she's managed to get out of scanning range from any would-be enemies on Morphia's surface.

Within minutes, she's examining the High Gallifreyan on the back of the card. She strokes the circular marks, drawn more carefully than the Doctor has ever managed in English. Coordinates, and instructions. Coordinates that look familiar.

"Home," River repeats softly to herself.

There's nothing to do but to do it.

She swiftly types in the coordinates, her lips tightening as all the research she's done –  
Gallifrey, the Time Lords, and Project Citadel – creeps to mind. No. No fear, no doubts. She made a promise.

If the Doctor says it isn't impossible to find Gallifrey, she's inclined to believe him.

River scans the last of the instructions, reluctant to admit that it says what she's sure it says, and unstraps the vortex manipulator from her wrist to wire it into the console of the ship according to the Gallifreyan written there.

"This had better not be the end of me, Doctor," she mutters, watches the vortex manipulator flick to life against the console, and takes a sharp breath.

She flips the switch and punches the ship into action.

No ship should be able to do this. She's hurtling through the Vortex and this ship can barely handle the strain, the computer beeping desperately and the hull groaning under the pressure; she's sure she's going to die in the heat of the Vortex when suddenly the ship punches through the side of it and is blasting through the atmosphere of a planet she doesn't recognize.

There's no way to stop. The red-orange of the skies rush past her as the ship hurtles into the building ahead despite her every effort, smashing through the roof and into pieces around her.

River heaves in a breath, swiping blood from her forehead as she gets onto her knees. She knows the ship is dead. She at least pries the vortex manipulator out of the console, straps it to her wrist, and tries not to stumble as she makes her way out of the wreckage.

He's staring at her as she makes her way to stable ground, and their eyes meet.

"River Song," the Master pronounces, and sees her clear.

* * *

**[Transcript from TARDIS-MSC014502 hologram file, TMT 03:21 1.3k25/3]**   
**This is Emergency Programme 2.**

**I know that at some point you _will_ hijack this TARDIS from me and begin your reign of terror yet again. What you should know by now is: I will always find you. Always. I found you at the end of the universe, I found you in the Prime Minister's office, I will find you anywhere you can think to hide.**

**I have my reasons. And I won't stop.**

**If you ever want to know them, you know how to find me.**

The Time Lords imprisoned him within moments of Gallifrey being shoved back under time-lock. Since then, there has been no regard for his illness, the way his body is falling apart even now. Every cell in his body has been screaming, and his throat is raw from shouting, hands and wrists bruised from the way he's assailed the walls and door.

Then, a mere moment ago, opportunity plowed through the roof into smoking wreckage, and a woman he at long last recalls, even after everything he's been through since, emerges.

She stares at him as though putting together a particularly difficult equation in her head, then as he approaches her she's on him. The Master has never been particularly good at hand-to-hand fighting – there are too many fine devices out there to limit such contact with his victims, and end things more quickly – and, despite his strength borne from desperate cannibalistic instinct, she laughs in the face of the pain from the burns to her wrists. He grinds out a sound of frustration, and she quickly gains the upper hand, producing a pair of isomorphic handcuffs from apparently nowhere to slap onto his wrists.

"River Song," the Master growls out, and laughs, despite himself.

"Yes, yes, dear," she says, flippant. "It's time to get out of here."

"And how do you plan to do that?" he fires back.

"Oh, I'll think of something." She draws a sonic trowel and snaps the door of the cell open within a moment. It's terribly undignified, the way she hauls him behind her.

"Madwoman!" He struggles against her grip. "Let me go."

"Not a chance," River says, tone slick.

The Chancellery Guard appear around the corner, and the Master's smile is wicked. " _Let me go_ ," he bites out. "I'll get us there, come with you willingly, all that."

There's only a moment for her to decide, and she rolls her eyes before tapping the key to the handcuffs to release him, snatching them up as they start to fall.

Of course she knows there's no honor to his promise, but that's not really relevant right now. He bursts with blue wisps of energy around him towards the Time Lords, and River shouts something he doesn't care about as he cannibalizes one of them. They fire at him, wound him, but it means nothing. Another falls from a shot from River, and he bolts away, laughing hard.

He hears River behind him, and disregards her for now. He needs a TARDIS. He needs the universe to bow before him.

"Stop," he hears River say, just as his body betrays him and he hits the ground. He's lucid for a moment and tries to catch his breath, and he meets her gaze, far steadier. "Which way to the TARDISes?" she asks.

"I'll show you," the Master says, no trace of the mad smile on his face.

The TARDISes are parked inconveniently far from the prison cells, but, from what he only vaguely recalls through the haze of restrained madness, the jailers were located on the _other_ side of the crash. They're likely scrambling through a whole different path to make it to the other side of the building now.

She hauls him onto the first TARDIS they reach and dumps him on the floor of the console room as she immediately gets to work doing _something_ with the console controls.

"Let me," he tries to get out, irritated at the prospect of some human trying to manage a TARDIS.

"Hush," River suggests, faux-teasing in a way that clearly hides annoyance. She pushes his face away from her vicinity with the side of her high heel. "I've got this all handled, just you wait."

He can't die this close to salvation. The only thing he can trust is that someone who saved him from a cell on a planet trapped in time likely doesn't mean to kill him right out; that seems like an inordinate amount of work for the pleasure. He grits his teeth, closes his eyes, and lets himself drift into unconsciousness.

* * *

**Transcript of PharmLab 426 Diagnostic #1.99.24.86b, Case #1352985A/S Designated: Gene Therapy. Physician: Doctor R. Song. 5465.295 NEMT 13:29:10**   
**This is Doctor River Song, performing GT Diagnostic #1.99.24.86b on Case #1352985A/S, or Mister M. Aster. Subject entered PL426 after reaching critical cell death caused by unknown trauma that left his DNA mutated beyond the help of the body's own self-repair. Subject has undergone extensive GT (see Diagnostics #1.99.18.05e and #1.99.20.21a for further information on most drastic treatment) and most readings would indicate that the condition of the subject seems to have stabilized. This diagnostic is to be performed to confirm this hypothesis and conclude whether further GT is required to restore subject to PL standard.**

**[Doctor, if you really want to know the rest, ask me, but I doubt the transcribing program you've given me has any clue what half of these words mean, nonetheless how to spell them.]**

Two years, and all at once River has a madman in her care, without a single explanation of what to do with him. All she can do is do what she suspects the Doctor would do. All she has is her instincts of what he would want for the Master, of all people, and she is decidedly not the Doctor.

The Doctor has to appear someday. The Doctor has to explain, someday.

Doesn't he?

The machines monitor only one of them, but the Master's two hearts are beating in their steady rhythm of four, his face impassive and blank as it's been since the day she started administering hourly tranquilizers to keep him unconscious. They won't be able to stay here much longer, and the only question that remains is _what next_. Why would the Doctor want her to save a man like this?

_Because anyone can be saved._

No. She'd been conditioned to hate and kill the Doctor, but it hadn't been her choice, and she'd never destroyed whole worlds because she thought it would be a good time. Even the delta wave hadn't been her choice, just a mission. The Doctor had tried his best to save her, but she couldn't be _reached_ until it was too late because of Kovarian and her plans. The Master is something else entirely.

He's a monster.

(Melody Pond, murderer of the Doctor, judge, jury and executioner to one of the last three known Time Lords in existence. The joke is too depressing to wait for the punchline.)

At least if the Doctor was here, she'd know if she was doing the right thing. "I know he thinks himself the eternal optimist but between you and me, I think he might just be mental," she says to the inert madman in the stasis tube.

_Do what you have to do, by any means necessary, River,_ he's scribbled on the same old cardstock. She fully plans on searching out and destroying any and all stationery she finds the next time she's on the TARDIS, if the Doctor leaves her alone long enough.

But she does what the Doctor says, as always. She takes the risk, she gives of herself, winding her DNA into his with relative ease. It's not as though it's difficult.

It's the least she can do.

* * *

Dead men don't dream.

Still, he's dreaming. In this dream he remembers his name, feels it at the core of his being, and knows it's still his. There are too many names he's taken on to commit his crimes, too many epithets he's earned along his path of destruction. Only one of them is real and true.

_I'm not dead,_ he says to the grey nothing ahead of him, the formless existence that he's a part of now. _I survived. I SURVIVED!_

The light assaults his eyes all at once. His eyes ache as he blinks awake, and a woman is standing over him with a gun casually pointed in his direction.

"Oh, you made it," she says. She doesn't necessarily sound (or look) pleased at the fact.

"Doctor," escapes his mouth, and then he remembers through the fog, his throat stopping. " _River_."

Her mouth is suddenly against his; his mind spirals from the contact and before he can speak, she says simply, "Don't fight it. You'll remember everything."

He opens his mouth to speak, but the hallucinogen takes hold; the red grasses of Mount Perdition and the soft ground beneath him drop him into a brief peace.

* * *

**Transcript of attached Vortex manipulator hologram, NEMT 05:39:21 1.45**   
**[A woman of indistinct race with long, lustrous hair in a ponytail, dressed in Church fatigues, appears.]**   
**You don't know my face, but I know your name. I know your crimes. I know who you love and who you want dead at all costs.**

**'What Desmond underestimated, what he would always underestimate, was the lengths a father would go to find and protect his child. A father would raise armies and take on all comers to bring her back home. A father wouldn't care for revenge. He would only care that she would live a full and happy life with those she loved.'**

**Amy wrote that for you. Do you remember the night she read it to you? Ovaltine in your favorite mug, her showing you her first gray hairs?**

**[Thewo man's expression goes serious.]**

**So, now that we've got through that. You need to promise me something.**

**You can't kill her.**

The TARDIS hums through the vortex, far from the PharmLab asteroid and anyone who might arrive to question their presence there. In the med bay, the Master wakes, recovers, and stares from his exhausted spot on the serviceable med cot, gaze full of what awful things he could visit upon his captor given the chance. River simply levels her gun at him and smiles.

He rolls his eyes at her gun, but stops shifting to sit up as she activates its cheerful hum. "River, River," he pronounces, with acidic enthusiasm. "Well, it _has_ been a while – one hundred trillion years, am I right?"

"So glad to be memorable," she purrs, her eyes refusing to leave him like he's a Weeping Angel.

He glares right back at her. "You knew what I was. You knew who I was, and you let me _suffer_ in that human body?"

River laughs; this is too good. "Oh, I wouldn't call some of what we did _suffering_ – "

"You're going to give me answers." The Master stands and advances; she fires once and strikes him in the shoulder. "Oh, really," he complains, then ignores that to demand, " _Who are you?_ "

She shrugs, then trips him with a leg sweep; he's already snatched a laser scalpel as he falls and starts to cut at her wrists and slice at her stomach once he's on heis feet. "You won't kill me," he taunts. "You saved me, you won't kill me."

"Who says?" River retorts, intoxicated by the game at hand, enough to play with him a moment longer.

"This is the Doctor, isn't it," the Master accuses her. "Him and his Earth girls."

She smirks at him, arrogant, predatory, and _waiting_. "Is it ever that simple?" she asks rhetorically.

"Oh, I'm _finished_ playing your games, River. Had a blast," he declares sarcastically, "thanks for the boost, but places to destroy, people to kill, that sort of thing." He bolts out of the med bay, an act of minimal dignity but surprising speed.

She raises her eyebrows in amusement, and begins to mend the broken skin of the cuts with a medical device, in no real rush.

He's collapsed in the corridor when she arrives there two minutes later, clearly maddened at the prospect that he _still_ hasn't recovered enough to murder her in cold blood. " _Enough_ ," he snarls at her as he sees her, and lashes out with the laser scalpel in pure desperation, but she reaches to her belt and shoots him in the shoulder with the tranquilizer.

"A good try," she admits to the unconscious Master as she pulls him up off the floor. "But you're going to have to work a lot harder than that to get away from me." His feet are dragging as she hauls him along. "On our way to Exola Prime, love! You'll love it."

When he wakes up, healed and strapped to a chair in the console room with more belts and buckles than could conceivably be necessary, he simply says, "I hate you."

"Oh, we haven't even started," River says, supremely teasing, and tosses her head of curls. "Come on, sweetie, work with me," she purrs at the TARDIS. She throws two switches and pulls a lever, and cackles as the Master tenses, thrown forward against his restraints. "Oh, good girl! Let's _roll_."

* * *

**Translation of Shadow Proclamation Bulletin released 1.25 NEMT as obtained from Judoon forces:**

**UNDESIRABLE #1: MELODY POND, WAR CRIMINAL, WANTED FOR THE DEATH OF THE DOCTOR**   
**UNDESIRABLE #2: TIME LORD KNOWN AS THE MASTER, WANTED FOR [REDACTED FOR LENGTH]**

**VERIFY GALAXY OF ORIGIN OF ANY BEING MATCHING THE DESCRIPTION FOLLOWING:**   
**[DNA PRINT OF BOTH EARTH AND GALLIFREYAN SPECIES ATTACHED]**

**UNDESIRABLES ARE SUSPECTED TO BE WORKING TOGETHER TO SOME UNKNOWN AIM. REWARD OF 100,000,000 YUEN TO ANY AGENCY THAT OFFERS INFORMATION WHICH AIDS INVESTIGATION BY THE PROCLAMATION.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is where Dead Dove: Do Not Eat kicks in. You've been warned.

**Key-coded hologram transmitted to TARDIS subspace frequency, TMT 13:25 1.5k20/8**   
**Hello, sweetie.**

****We need to have a chat. I know this will reach you in the part of your timeline I need you most. I've done my research. You know I'm so _very_ good at research.** **

****It's time for you to show your face. I have your prize. He had better be worth it, whatever you're planning to do. Coordinates provided, per standard.** **

****[She pauses, and glances away.]** **

****I'll see you soon. Trust me. He's in good hands.** **

The cabin is on a serene rose-colored lake on the planet Exola Prime. The morning light shimmers on the surface as River Song glances up through the cabin window from her work rewiring her still-glitching vortex manipulator.

The Master sulks in the corner, sitting up against the wall of the bed they'd shared (rather reluctantly) the previous night. The isomorphic handcuffs she's clapped on him are clearly maddening him greatly, and she doubts he slept well cuffed to the headboard. Rattled prey makes the psychopath in her very, very happy, something she shoves back down before the trouble starts again.

The first thing River's noticed about this relatively new Master, this almost stable one, is that he is as dumb as a bag of bricks or someone thoroughly beaten with one, which seems to be par for the course for Time Lords – at least, male ones. The most obvious sign of this is that it hasn't occurred to him to force a regeneration yet, as he's just damaged enough yet to manage it.

She might be biased, though. She's been known to go through these things like androids through swappable heads.

The second most obvious sign is that he's not asking any of the right questions, and just stares at her like he can almost see her, maybe, like he could almost put it together if only he could think. If he could focus, he would see through her in an instant.

She finishes up her work, and, in a friendly enough movement, considering, seizes him by the handcuffs to pull him into the TARDIS where it's parked in the corner of the room. Frustration comes off of him in waves. Within a few minutes she's changed into a flattering dress in muted gold tones, and she's produced a sharp suit from the wardrobe. She tosses it on the nearby chair, and releases him.

"Where are we going," the Master says flatly.

"You'll see," she says. "Now get dressed, love, or I'll strip you and dress you myself."

"Answer me," he says, tone forced amiable, "or I will get my teeth into you, River Song." Something intelligent but wild is in his eyes yet, despite all her work to save him from the madness of a broken regeneration. "I will rip as many pieces from you as I can until you are a bloody, helpless mess, and no one can save you."

"Oh, you're getting me all hot and bothered." She fans herself. "Do you promise, Mr Saxon?"

The Master rolls his eyes. "Where are we going," he pronounces.

"It's none of your business." She comes close to him and kisses his cheek, lingering. "I like this you, Harry. It suits you."

"Don't be obtuse," he starts, visibly weighing the benefits of murdering her with his bare hands.

"Trapped on Earth, amongst humans, making the best of it, that was never you, was it? That's all I mean. You _were_ Harold Saxon. There was nothing else you could be. Out here... in the universe, among the stars..."

"Leashed," he says, bitterly.

"For now," she says, and raises her eyebrows.

He releases a short, irritated breath. "What does that mean," he attempts to prompt her.

"It means I have a tendency to wing it," River says, and tweaks his nose. "For now, I know where we're headed. Go on, get dressed."

She doesn't avert her gaze, idly examining her fingernails but not turning away as he sheds his clothes. "You might as well just tell me now," he says, easy but with an edge. "Who you are, what you want. We could work together."

"I know you," she reminds him, with a skeptical look. "Am I going to fall for that?"

He spreads his hands demonstratively, shirt half-buttoned. "I am at your mercy, River."

"You are," she says, "but I'm not sure you understand _just how much_."

His eyebrows raise as he finishes up his shirt. She's got his interest. "I'm a dangerous man. You _do_ seem to understand that. What _I_ don't understand is much simpler – there are _so many_ dangerous men out there, Ms Song. Why not steal one of them from their beds and bring them back to life?"

"A girl _must_ have standards," she says in half a purr, "and... oh, that suit." She paces around him, predatory, and he ignores her. "You are quite handsome." She picks up the jacket and indicates he should raise an arm, and, once he's comfortably settled in the jacket, she grabs him by the collar of the shirt and kisses him. He shoves at her, but she holds on a moment longer before releasing him, smiling with lewd satisfaction.

"Whatever they're paying," the Master says, as though she hadn't done a thing at all, "I can pay more."

"You really can't," River says, mildly amused.

"A lover, then? Family?" In that instant, she doesn't know if she's given anything away, and she can't tell if he's caught anything, either. She curls her fingers into his hair and looks into his face, all faux-ingenue, and to her surprise something's changed in his eyes; they're cold, deep, and endless, the natural opposite of her Doctor's, and she's frozen in his gaze like some stupid human. "I'll say this for you, River," he says. "You are _very_ good. _But I could make you even better_."

"I know what happens to your allies," she starts, focusing on keeping her feet planted where they are.

"But I've never had a protege. Not a proper one. Or are you too good to put your name beside mine?"

"My name is sullied enough," she says, unable to resist a smile.

"Answer the question."

"What could I possibly gain by _learning_ from someone I so easily bested?"

"You bested me at my weakest. And we might have things to learn from each other," he allows. "What do you think?"

"I think this is very you," she says. "And the handcuffs stay on until I'm good and ready to take them off." He scowls as she clamps them around his wrists again with a tap of the key. "Give us a twirl, love. Please."

"No."

"Well, I had to try."

* * *

****Complete excerpt on psychopathy from Gallifreyan medical text _A Timeline of Time Lord Biology_ , 1st edition**  
 **This is more than an undesirable trait in a Time Lord. It is unacceptable. It must be put down.** **

****The ancient law completely prohibits such behavior, and the Citadel will justify mercy killing of the afflicted on behalf of the universe. We have a responsibility as Time Lords to keep such creatures from ravaging time and space. Your vows as a healer are irrelevant if you have the opportunity to do this work.** **

There are no weapons allowed on the carnival planet Pertista.

The Master suspects that's at least part of the reason this is their first true outing after his recovery period: River Song is none too keen to place him anywhere a weapon can be rooted out, at least until she's in the mood for a fight.

The irritation at not knowing exactly what her game is has settled into a burning curiosity instead. No Time Agent he's ever known has been able to fly a TARDIS. The Justice Department would have simply pulled him from the timeline and tortured him. No forces that he knows of are remotely interested in saving his life and toying with him like a particularly nasty predator.

Really, no one is interested in saving his life. The Time Lords have pulled his DNA from the Matrix multiple times to bring him back to life, but they certainly weren't particularly interested in saving his life when they left him screaming in a cell. He has many enemies, some allies, most of them now enemies from his double-cross or the like.

What could she be?

The Master has decided that, for now, he doesn't mean to kill River Song. Torture is more likely on the table. He needs to know what's going on, who means to interfere with the likes of him, and she has not been remotely straightforward. Honestly, it's the only way to be sure.

Pertista is, frankly, hideous. The location of the carnival receives only a handful of hours of sunlight, so one only observes the huge, domed monstrosity of a circus city by red-shaded lamplight. There are bright spots here and there from lanterns to light wares and games, and River hauls him with great amusement along one of the thoroughfares by a chain connected to the handcuffs.

"This is humiliating," he informs her flatly.

"You'll live," River says amiably enough, and considers jewelry resting inside a velvet case in the nearest stall.

"Do you think this is going to work out for you?" The Master moves to her side, ignoring the woman working on a small computing device behind the stall table. "Dragging me along beside you? For how long? What are you planning?"

"These are lovely," River says to the woman, indicating a pair of earrings and ignoring what he said completely. It burns more than it should. _She's doing this on purpose._ "What's the asking price?"

"Five hundred yuen," the shopkeeper says, and smiles. "A pretty piece for you to wear on a date with this handsome thing, yes?"

River laughs, and takes out her device to scan out the money. "Oh, he just loves looking at me," she says. "No matter what I'm wearing or not wearing." She smirks, and accepts the earrings in the small box provided. "You know, have to keep men in line, don't you," she adds to the shopkeeper.

"Don't I know it," the shopkeeper says cheerily, and nods to her before getting back to her business.

River pulls him away with a gentle lead after putting away the earrings, and he takes a breath before he speaks next. "Do I need to play along with your ridiculous little game in order to get the smallest piece of information?"

"Don't you ever just have fun?" she asks him, a faint smile on her lips.

"All the time," he says, and attempts a gesture, halted by the handcuffs. He resists a scowl. "Not often in handcuffs."

"Isn't that a shame," she drawls.

Might as well be out with it. "Did you save me from Gallifrey and fix my DNA just so you could have sex with me?" he asks, only half-sarcastic.

River laughs, a broad, appreciative sound. "Wouldn't you like that!"

He takes a moment or two to calibrate exactly how to respond. "Maybe I would."

She smirks, and walks ahead. "If you're thinking that a good roll is the way to disarm me so you can kill me," she says, "you haven't thought this through."

"If I kill you, I won't know what's going on," the Master says, tone even. "I know."

"And you'll find it hard to torture me," she goes on.

"Really," he says, apparently noncommittal.

She barely glances over to him, eyebrows raised. "I didn't mean it as a challenge."

He brushes past that for now. "Whatever it takes," he says. "I want to move well past this." He's beside her now. "To a different place, for the both of us."

River is playing at pretending to be observing the stalls on the thoroughfare again. "Mm," she says.

The Master's not done. "I want you," he goes on. "The things I could do with you, oh, River Song – "

Her gaze goes sideways to him. "I happen to be quite capable of managing on my own. As you well know."

"So am I," he says, not missing a beat, "but that doesn't mean some sort of agreement could be reached for the betterment of both our situations."

"If you're so capable of managing on your own, how did you wind up dying in a cell on Gallifrey?" River asks, that purposely casual tone in her voice again.

She's got his back up again. It's even more irritating that she can get under his skin in the first place. "I made a choice," the Master says levelly. "How much do you know?"

Her smile is bemused. "I know everything."

"The Valiant?" he prompts her.

"You chose to die. I know." Her tone, her expression, it's all completely unreadable.

He might have something here. "And why would I do that?"

"Fear of capture," River says, and her half-smile widens to something wry. "See where that got you?"

"Much worse than that," the Master says, just softly enough that only she can hear it. "Fear of being tamed. One can be captured without being tamed."

"And who could tame you?" she asks smoothly. "Who could break the monster in you?"

"I have no intention of finding out." He glances away from her. "It won't be you."

"I'm not here to break you," she makes clear, with vague amusement.

"There's only one person in the universe who cares to break me in like a disobedient stallion instead of seeing me dead or marooned in obscurity for the hundredth time." He needs to keep emotion from his voice, any sign of it. "Do you know who that is, River?"

"I found you as a human at the end of the universe," River says mildly. "You think I don't know your history?"

"Say it," he insists. "Tell me his name."

She rolls her eyes. "The Doctor," she says. "And?"

The Master is watching her yet. "Someone hired you," he says. "Someone who knew me well. Who knew my movements, who knew my timeline."

"Have I not made it clear that we're not having this conversation?" He seems to be testing her patience. Good.

"And what will you do to me if I press you?" he carries on, tone terribly smooth.

River curls the chain a bit more tightly around her hand. "I have been known to go off-script."

"And who is writing your script?" His gaze is rapt on her, now, looking for any sign of weakness.

"I write my own script," she says, mild.

His own patience is slightly tested by his inability to do much by way of gesturing. He doesn't let it show, though. "Then why does it seem like you're waiting for something?"

"In good time, love." She considers him. "It'll all become very clear."

"Hmm," the Master offers, unabashedly judgmental.

River shakes her head, not a curl loose from its place. He has the sudden urge to leave her hair a ragged mess, his fingers tight in the roots of a handful of curls, the sounds she would make as he forced her down. It's too tempting a thought, and she glances at him to meet his hungry gaze.

"So," she says briskly. "What do you think?"

"You know what I think." His voice is soft, predatory.

"What to do," she muses, and leads them down an alleyway. The sound of the thoroughfare is far less here, not a soul to be seen, and he watches her loosen the chain, hearts quickening.

"Is this where you kill me?" he taunts.

"I'm bored." River's eyes have their own wildness in them. "Beg me."

The Master doesn't take the bait. Not immediately, anyway. "What am I begging for?"

"Oh, don't be cute," she says, and her eyebrows raise. "Well?"

"I don't beg," he dismisses. "I assure you it would be worth it."

"Say 'please.'"

Games within games. He wouldn't ache for anything less.

He raises his cuffed hands with an amused look. "Please," he requests.

She draws out the key and deliberately releases him from the handcuffs, leaving them swinging down off the chain. She binds them together and puts them away, watching him as she does. "If you mean to kill me," she says, "at least wait until after."

He laughs, soft, wicked. "I hope you don't give up without a fight."

With that, she yanks him towards her by the lapels and he pushes her up against the wall of the alley. Their mouths meet harshly, much greedier than the comfort fucks when he was wretched Yana; he pushes up her skirt around her hips and his fingers inside of her without the slightest hesitation or warning.

She hums approvingly into his mouth, and he works away at her until she's so wet he can't wait any longer. She undoes his trousers and he lifts her up against the wall to press inside of her, his fingers seeking into her hair just as he'd imagined, gripped as hard as his hand on her hip.

"Yes," River breathes, and he kisses her hard to take her breath away as he fucks her harder. She's making fantastic sounds, and he's completely spellbound. He shoves her head back against the wall and bites into the skin of her neck; she laughs, throaty, and it takes a concerted effort not to come on the spot.

"Beg me," he manages to get out.

"Mm," she can't seem to get away without moaning, then her attention is broken again by his teeth against her neck. "Oh, fuck – "

The Master shoves himself harshly inside her and stays just where he is. "Say 'please,'" he whispers.

The moment is far too long for him, staying in place where he's rigid inside of her, desperate for release, but then she says it, tone dipping down. "Please."

He needs no further invitation. It's only a few more thrusts before she makes the most delicious choking sound, her pulse racing against his mouth on her throat, and he comes mere seconds later.

He's still a wreck, hungry for blood now, ready to boil over, when she speaks. "Not bad," she says, breathless, as he withdraws just enough to do up his trousers again with his free hand.

"Should I kill you now?" he asks softly, moving his hand to touch her throat. "Snap your neck? Strangle the life from you?"

"Oh, try your hardest," she whispers.

Within an instant he's pinned her to the wall by the throat and she kicks at his knee; his grip loosens just enough and she seizes his arm, twisting it to turn him all the way around and up against the wall, arm pinned around his back. He laughs, utterly pleased. "Put me down," he says, out of his head with the feeling of the _game_. "End me, River Song."

River presses a kiss against his neck, her breath warm on his skin. "I have other plans for you."

"Oh, I bet you do." The Master could drown in this moment.

She laughs, soft, but he doesn't get to hear what she says next, as a laser rifle fires into the air a meter away.

River glances away from him, grip steady, and smiles broadly. "Hello, Eda," she says, raising her voice. "What a pleasure."

The Master can twist his head just enough to see a tall alien with blue hair to her waist and blacked-out eyes hoisting a laser rifle, too nearby for comfort. "Friend of yours?" he asks River, brightly acidic.

"Oh, who has friends," River says, flippant. "What's the price?"

"One hundred million yuen just for information," Eda says, tone silky. "Imagine what they'll pay for your heads."

"Ah, one hundred million yuen doesn't get you what it used to," the Master says, in weary sarcasm. "Bounty hunters, how disappointing."

River glances to the Master without turning her head. "Generally," she agrees. "So what are you going to do?" she directs to Eda.

"Kill you," Eda says, unmoved.

"Typical," the Master says, then moves instantly behind River once she's released him. Her hands can't be full with him right now. The laser rifle blast glances off the shield River throws up from her vortex manipulator, and she yanks out the isomorphic handcuffs, clicks a button on them, and they dart through the air to immediately lock onto Eda's wrists; she yelps and swears loudly, and the laser rifle clatters to the ground.

River seizes the gun right away, and primes it to a hum. "Right," she says. "The Pertista guard will be here in a – ah, hello!" she says brightly to the red-clothed guards who appear in the alleyway. "Beg pardon." She fires the rifle into the roof of the stall nearby, and heavy debris makes the guards scatter; in the chaos, River grabs the Master by the arm and hauls him over the debris and onto the thoroughfare, running until they make it to where the TARDIS is parked.

The door slams behind them, and River says, a little breathless, "I'm going to need new handcuffs."

"Let's _go_ ," the Master says pointedly, and heads to the console.

"Ah, ah, ah, no, no." She nudges him aside. "I know where we're going."

"Where?" he says, unable to keep a little sarcasm from his voice. "What _is_ the plan, River?"

"Trust me," River says, sly and low, and shoots him a wink.

The Master rolls his eyes, and takes a seat as she plugs in a location and flips the lever to send the TARDIS flying into the vortex.

* * *

****Excerpt from confession log of Melody Pond, 5235/10.12**  
 **No, no, no, _no_.** **

****_Confess._ ** **

****Oh. It's you.** **

****_Confess._ ** **

****Nothing to confess, sorry. Not big on repentance, you know.** **

****_You fled from us. You came to love your prey._ ** **

****I did the job you wanted me to do.** **

****_And you saved him._ ** **

****Well. Technically I did what you asked, didn't I?** **

****_You will kill the Doctor. Silence will fall._ ** **

****Hm, old hat, that. Don't you have something new for me?** **

****_No._ ** **

****You know, the Church is one of the most powerful entities in the universe. So, here's what I figure: _make me_.** **

****_That can be arranged._ ** **

The TARDIS lands. River is still getting used to the gentle whispers of this TARDIS, different from the Doctor's TARDIS, a bit more reticent. It's not sure about their arrival. She shakes her head. "Everything will be fine," she says, soothing, to the console, and it lightly chirps in response.

"What are you doing?" the Master asks, in a tone he seems to have wholly reserved for her: mild, slightly resigned, a shade irritated, and a touch sarcastic.

"Don't worry your pretty head about it," River advises, and steps back. "Right. We're here."

"And where are we?" he persists.

She strides past him. "How much do you know about the Church?" she asks.

He puts it together faster than she was ready to give him credit for managing. "We're at the Papal Mainframe."

"And why would I take us to the Papal Mainframe?" she prompts him.

His gaze is intent on her. "Sanctuary," he says. "You realize that's only a half-measure?"

"Little else we can do for now," River points out. "Lay low. Just for a time."

"That's boring." The Master couldn't possibly look less intrigued at the prospect. "I'm not doing it."

"I'm afraid that's our itinerary, darling," she says breezily. "I think, one week?"

" _One week_?" he echoes, scandalized.

"You can manage one week, can't you?" She can't help her amusement. "One week, with me, with nothing to do. Can't you think of a way to keep yourself busy?"

His expression has gone cold. "I told you I won't be tamed. That includes you."

"If I've given you the impression that I'm interested in you becoming _boring_ , I'm terribly sorry," River says easily. "I'm only asking for one week without schemes and murder."

The Master is considering her. "And then you'd free me?"

She laughs. "I don't mean to free you," she says. "Sorry to disappoint."

He's bristling again. "I've refrained from killing you and taking this TARDIS," he warns. "That can end at any time."

"I'm counting on it," she teases.

"Stop that," he retorts, weary again. "I'm threatening you, not propositioning you."

Her smile widens. "Isn't it the same thing?"

He swipes a hand over his face. "What are the odds another bounty hunter finds us if we travel through _time_ ," he says, "considering that we have a fully-functional machine on hand that can do so."

"Vortex manipulators are hardly a rare thing," River returns. "I know these people. This is the way forward. They don't dare interfere with the Church."

"Two days," the Master says after the slightest pause. "No more."

She considers him, then nods. "Two days," she agrees. "Come along now. They must be wondering about us."

He sighs, and moves off of the chair, brushing nothing in particular off of his suit as a dismissive gesture. "Lead the way."

She knows he's trying to put her in the front of danger, and she doesn't particularly care. She moves to the door, well aware that there's a psychopath at her back, and opens it to step outside. There are two Church soldiers stationed outside, and they go ramrod straight at seeing her. She raises her eyebrows, and gestures to the Master behind her to follow.

River locks the TARDIS in a simple gesture of her sonic trowel, then turns to the soldiers. "We claim sanctuary," she says, to the point.

The soldiers glance at each other, worry in their faces, then move up the staircase ahead of them without offering anything resembling a response. She's refusing to be unnerved by the situation, but then the Master speaks from behind her. "This is going well."

"Hush." She shakes her head. "It may not be as simple as just saying the words and being ushered to a room."

"We could go," he says idly. "There's time yet before they return with more people and bigger guns."

"Do you always assume the worst?" she directs at him with a glance.

"Why would you assume the best?" he returns, a critical lilt to his tone.

"I generally assume the middle," River says easily. "That's what usually happens."

"That seems like a terrible approach," the Master says frankly.

"I've made it this far." She contemplates the situation. "If they aren't back within a few minutes we're just going to find a spot and barricade ourselves whether they like it or not, is that more to your liking?"

He shrugs. "I have a few better ideas."

"Oh, I'm sure you do," she says, rolling her eyes without much malice.

There's movement from the stairwell. Soldiers move forward first, then bipedal aliens with twisted faces move forward, the sight of which sends a shock through River, breaking her composure. She barely notices the woman behind the aliens, as the creatures drift ahead of the soldiers.

" _Confess_ ," one of them breathes in her direction.

It all comes back to her with a crash of clarity. "Oh," she gasps, and backs up into the Master. "No, no, no – "

"And what are _you_ ," the Master is saying softly, and steps past River. "Psychic abilities, I see. Not telekinetic – no, no, post-hypnotic suggestion. How interesting."

River refuses to look away from the alien, whose eyes are locked on her. "You." Her voice strengthens, steel and backbone all at once, and she pulls out her gun, turning her gun on the woman behind the Church troops while keeping her eye mostly on the confessor. "Don't you try one single thing," she warns, pure ice in her tone, "or I will kill you all."

"Ah, River," the Master says, all forced-offhanded, "is this the way to make friends at the moment?"

"River Song." The woman's voice sounds terribly amused. "You must understand. The confessors you have faced before were under the purview of a sect that has been cast out. You will be safe here, so long as you make the right choices right now."

"You know these people," the Master whispers, clearly attempting to do some sort of mental maths.

River knows she has no choice. She turns away from the alien with full knowledge of what's going to happen to her mind, but she has foresight enough to keep her gun pointed at the woman at the top of the stairwell, even before the memory of the conversation slips from her mind's grasp. "Sanctuary," she repeats.

Tasha Lem. She isn't exactly an unknown figure in the 52nd century, River's arguably home time, and River watches her cautiously as she moves down the steps and dismisses the figures nearby to fall back. She is about as queenly as one would expect from the Papal Mainframe, and River senses that something is happening, something she can't quite put her finger on.

"Tasha Lem," the Master realizes, a touch delighted. "The Mother Superious Herself! Why are we so graced?"

Tasha considers the two of them, River with amusement and the Master with bemusement. "Your sanctuary has been granted," she declares, clearly more of a formality. "For how long do you need our protection?"

"Two days." River feels something quickening in her, and she lowers her gun.

"Just to be clear," the Master speaks up, "you wouldn't turn us over to any authorities who asked?"

"That is our meaning of sanctuary, yes," Tasha says, a vague smile starting on her lips. She gestures, and two troops come to her side. "Find these two a place to stay," she orders. "And... stay close."

"Are you speaking to them or to us?" River asks, still not holstering her gun. She's uneasy, though she couldn't tell you why.

"I recommend you stay to your quarters unless you're eating." Tasha's tone is mild. "Much easier to stay out of trouble that way."

The Master clears his throat. "Oh, I imagine so," he says.

"You'll want to share a room?" Tasha checks.

River glances at the Master. "I do think so," she says. "This one needs to be watched."

"Yes," Tasha says without missing a beat, "he does."

The Master's gaze goes to the Mother Superious again. "You know who I am."

"I know many things." Tasha's smile is verging on a smirk. "And I know what needs doing." She nods to the troops. "Go on. Ask them if you need anything," she directs to River and the Master. "We are here to serve."

"Oh, I'm sure," the Master says, tone sharper but still pleasant.

Tasha flashes a thin smile, eyes River, and sweeps off. River catches a glance of something moving, meets the eyes of an alien creature, and a bolt of fear jolts through her until the Master pulls her by the shoulder to bring her along after the Church troops.

"What?" River demands of him, then exhales sharply. "Ah." She doesn't like what this place is doing to her. She's never this jumpy, even, maybe especially, in unfamiliar places.

"Do relax," the Master says, amiable but judgmental besides, "or this is going to be terribly stressful as well as dreadfully boring."

"I'll try to keep you entertained," she returns, doing her best to seize back her playful cover.

"You'd better," he says, and glances away, contemplative.

The Doctor trusts the Church, as much as he trusts anyone.

This cannot be her last mistake.

He'll come for her soon. She has to believe that.

* * *

****Excerpt from Gallifreyan Citadel memorandum from the office of the President, 8.5ml.35/3**  
 **The list of crimes committed by the Master is too long to be delineated even here. He is a degenerate creature who has destroyed worlds against all our laws. He is an unstoppable force once the enemy is in sight. There is no better time than a war throughout time and space to bring such a man back into the fold from the recesses of the Matrix.** **

****Bring him back, break him, and _do not let the Doctor see his face._** **

Time drags on at the Papal Mainframe. One day in, the Master and River eat alongside troops who look remarkably jumpy at their presence, then are escorted back to the mid-sized, barely furnished room. He supposes they don't want to encourage sanctuary too much by making it a lovely holiday.

Still, it's dreadful.

"We aren't just here to hide," the Master checks with River, who rests comfortably reading a data pad she's somehow procured; he knows she didn't bring it along with them. "You must be doing _something_."

"And why would you think that?" River asks, without much by way of inflection.

"Because you aren't that _boring_ ," he pronounces. "Now are you?"

"Maybe I am." She's still revealing nothing. Maddening.

He tilts his chair back against the wall, idly fuming, then walks over to the bed and snatches the data pad from her hands. "Pardon," he says easily.

"Excuse me," she fires back, on her feet with her gun in her hands within an instant.

"Now, now, let's not be hast – " He pauses as he finishes his skim through the data she has pulled up. "Why are you looking up Huon particle response in Church territory?"

River considers him, apparently calm despite the gun in her hand. "Why not?"

"Because it's absolute nonsense," the Master points out. "All Huon particles were destroyed. I would know."

"Then why are there records?" she returns, easy.

He frowns, and looks through the pages provided more closely. His hearts quicken. "A TARDIS," he says aloud as he realizes. "A TARDIS created before the time of war with the Racnoss."

River pauses, clearly restraining a quizzical look. "Whatever you say," she says. "I'm working on a theory."

 _The Doctor._ He paces, a rush of sick excitement working through him as he reads through the pages. There isn't much by way of data, but there are two points of faint Huon energy barely registering in Church territory throughout its history, and he turns on River. "Been a pleasure," the Master says, slick and amused, "but I have somewhere to be."

She rolls her eyes and activates her gun with a hum. "Do you think I don't know how to kill you?" she asks.

"I think you won't," he says, beyond elated now at the prospect of being free to chase down his Doctor. "I think you may be a coward." He considers her, his hearts blazing. "I think you may have wedded your fate to another coward."

"And what does that mean?" she says, just a touch acidic.

"I think we both know who you're waiting for," the Master says, giddy, smooth yet. "Well, why don't we go out and get him?"

"Are you purposely trying to be irritating?" River asks, her impatience flaring.

"You have three options." He ticks them off on his hand. "One: you let me go and take the TARDIS alone. Two: you shoot me and get yourself ejected from sanctuary. Three: you come with me to kill the Doctor." He tilts his chin up. "The Doctor isn't coming for you. You want him, you have to go get him. Trust me on that."

"Doctor, Doctor, Doctor," she drawls, irritation still clear in her tone. "The stories didn't exaggerate, you really are obsessed."

"Oh, you are being so very _human_ right now," he complains, and gestures with the pad before she fires through it. It clatters against the wall and smokes as it hits the floor, a hole burnt through it. He loses all control in that instant, and he flies at her. She fires at him but he shoves it out of the way just in time, the burst glancing off against the wall; the gun hits the floor with a thunk. She struggles against him on the bed as he tries to get his hands to her throat.

"Master," she whispers up against him.

It's the first time she's used his name in all this time. That simple fact registering in his brain is enough to confuse him through the rage, and gives her a moment to yank him down by the collar against her. "Is this really how you want to spend your time?" she asks, soft, insinuating.

He wraps a single hand around her neck in answer and presses down, hard; something intense burns in River's eyes as she barely gets in air. His jaw sets, then he yanks his trousers down and her skirt up. She gasps, her eyes falling shut, as he moves against her; her instinctive twitches for air just arouse him even more, until he finally presses inside of her.

She's at his mercy. He could break her neck now. It's perfect. He dreams, as he feels her writhe against him, of the Doctor underneath him just so, and it's almost enough to take him over the edge far too soon. He groans and digs his fingernails into her skin, hard, intent to leave marks. She shudders into an orgasm before he does, and he revels in the moment, purposefully taking his moment to derive pleasure from her suffering, before giving into a crashing orgasm of his own.

His head drops, overwhelmed, only for a moment; then he yanks himself away and does up his trousers. River's up just as quickly, and the scramble for the gun fires a blast into River's shoulder. She hits the wall behind the bed and his hands are shaking as he points the gun at her.

"Now, River," he says, breaths still short, "this is where we have the real fun."

* * *

"I have nothing to say," River says to the Master steadily, as he stands over her in giddy rage.

"So you say," he says, too keyed-up to manage the casual tone he seems to want to adopt. "I'm afraid I'm lacking in tools for this moment, so we're just going to have to stick with the gun. How many laser wounds do you think you can withstand before bringing yourself to answer my questions?"

She considers him idly, blocking out the pain of the wound in her shoulder without much effort. "What do you want to know?" she asks, managing a small smirk.

He seems ready to dispense with some of the games. "Are you an associate of the Doctor's?"

"Your fixation is a bit worrying," River says, eyebrows lifting.

"Answer the question," he demands.

"No," she says plainly.

The Master looks even more ready to fire. "Why don't I believe you?"

"Because you're paranoid and obsessed?" she suggests.

"Tell the truth." Everything about him is rigid, his voice, his stance, his face. " _Are you an associate of the Doctor's?_ "

"Either I'm telling the truth and you're going to shoot me," River says blandly, "or I'm lying and you're going to shoot me. So just do it, _Master_ , and be done with it."

"Shut _up_ ," he retorts, nettled.

"Why haven't you killed me?" she persists. "What's stopping you from killing me, taking the TARDIS, and hunting down your precious Doctor?"

"If you're an associate of the Doctor's, I need you," the Master snaps off.

"And if I'm not?" she says, all breezy.

"Then you're still a hostage." He seems to be convincing himself. "River Song, River Song, what shall I do with you?"

"Kill me or take me with you," River says. "Torturing me for the sake of torturing, that seems a bit silly, doesn't it? It's both a waste of our time _and_ will deeply upset the sainted Doctor, from what I understand of him."

"I don't care what the Doctor thinks!" he insists; he's becoming a little more unhinged every minute. "I want you to tell the truth!"

She gestures. "Do you have proof that I'm not telling the truth?"

The Master makes an irritated sound and advances on her where she's resting against the wall behind the bed. She doesn't move as he moves directly on top of her, pressing the gun to her forehead. "Tell me," he says, tone silky and mad.

"You're going to believe what you're going to believe," River says softly, staring up at him. "Now here's the fun part." She rams the heel of her hand into his chest and takes the instant given to her by winding him to start to pry the gun out of his hands. The gun goes off again, safely into the wall, and he releases an enraged sound as the gun makes its way into her hands. She presses the gun into his chest and backs him up until they're both standing.

He breaks the silence, spreading his hands in an open gesture. "Kill me then," he declares. "What's stopping you?"

"Absolutely nothing," she says, with a faint smile. "I could put you down right now."

"Do it," he demands. "Do it! Don't be a coward. Prove to me that you're not soft like the Doctor, that you're not poisoned with his sentimental nonsense. Then I'll believe you."

Her smile widens despite herself. "Then you'll be dead."

"I want to be free," the Master pronounces. "If I have to die to be free then so be it."

"If I free you," she reasons, "you'll kill the Doctor."

"Just until I get a pretty regeneration out of him," he says, with a faint smirk. "Then we'll see what I do."

"Why don't I come with you?" River's gaze is hot on him. "If you're right, I'm a hostage. If you're wrong, I might be willing to help you."

"For what price?" he taunts. "What does _River Song_ even want from me?"

"I'll come up with something," she says, playful enough. "What do you think?"

"I think I need more than just one glance at a data pad," the Master says, rolling his eyes. "Thanks for that."

She gestures nonchalantly. "What's the plan?"

He pauses, appearing genuinely surprised. "Are you agreeing to free me?"

"Here's the deal," River says, to the point. "I do this favor for you. You do a favor for me."

He bristles near instantly, then it dawns on him. "An alliance," he says, soft.

"For now." Her smile is teasing. "What do you think?"

He looks terribly amused. "You said yourself nothing good comes from allying with me."

"I happen to know I can put you down whenever I damn well feel like it," she says, almost cheery. "So, shall we?" She lowers the gun.

He smirks, then picks up the sonic trowel to unlock the door.

* * *

****Excerpt from _A Most Superior Mother: A Young Churchgoer's Guide to Tasha Lem_ , 2nd edition.**  
 **In the 51st century, our Mother Superious, Tasha Lem, was born on an unknown planet in the constellation of Kasterborous. She was a wise scholar who discovered the seeds of our faith in her many travels, and drew together peoples from many places to form the Church. The Papal Mainframe as we know it was built around her divine guidance and clever mind. One can learn many lessons from the life and writings of Tasha Lem. Let's begin.** **

The key to it all is in the name: the Papal Mainframe.

"You're insane," River says as she observes him at work, but more as a note than a judgment.

"Heh," is the only comment he makes. He's busy.

It took very little effort to send the concerned Church troops away from the door, lie in wait and boredom for about an hour, then get to a lower-level control room in the ship, actually. People as a general rule don't realize what sort of damage an absolutely brilliant person such as himself can do with the least amount of materials. He's already assessed what he needs to do. River's hanging back, watching him as he taps the screen and types rapidly, not speaking until he moves away from the console and starts rifling through the nearby equipment.

"How long do we have until they realize what you're doing?" she asks.

"About five minutes," the Master says, and holds the cerebral circuit aloft with a pleased sound. River moves to his side, ready to speak, probably object, but he gestures her aside impatiently and opens the console with the sonic trowel to wire the circuit into the system.

"Don't do this," River presses him. "This is a bad idea."

"Hush now," he returns, smooth and reckless. He's lightheaded from glee as he puts the circuit around the back of his head and clicks it around his temples, and shoves River's hand off of his arm. "Daddy's busy. Ready? I am!" He hits a few more buttons, then the Papal Mainframe floods his brain.

A Time Lord consciousness is a force to be reckoned with, more than enough for one given brain, but this is something new. What he wasn't prepared for: the Mainframe is awake. Alive. It feels him there, and it smiles.

Then: he knows. Tasha Lem manages to lock him out of her brain just late enough that he breathes in what he needs to know, what he's needed to know for days, and he laughs, just on the verge of maniacal, before yanking the circuit off of his head.

"River _Song_!" he sing-songs, and runs off at a breakneck pace. He hears her footsteps behind him, the footsteps and the bursts of laser fire from Church weapons behind him, but they're all too late. It's all too late.

He yanks open the TARDIS door and slams it shut, deadlocking it with the sonic trowel. He bolts to the console to plug in the coordinates he feels burnt into his mind, when Tasha Lem's face appears on the screen.

"How much do you know?" Tasha asks, gaze full of something far too familiar by now.

"Enough," he bites off wickedly, and grins. "Hello, darling, I'll see you soon."

He yanks the lever and the TARDIS departs, just as River's scrabbling to get the key in the door.

It takes only two minutes into the flight to find the box of blue envelopes. He sits on the floor, peering through them, hearts full as he realizes what he has to do.

"Love a stable time loop," he drawls, as pleased as he's been in years, and seizes the box, ready to track their space-time paths with a trick or two.

This is going to take some work, but, oh, isn't freedom (and a little murder) worth it?

* * *

****The contents of a TARDIS-blue envelope as received by River Song, GMT 03:20:32 03/08/2008**  
 **I promise, you will see me soon. No spoilers.** **

****He'll be creating a program called Project Citadel. You must be on this project. Only you can do what needs to be done.** **

****I trust you. Steady on.** **

River rests back against the booth of the diner. The exhaustion can't overwhelm her. She won't let it. Lake Michigan is very nearly visible from the window beside her, but for once on her holiday time she's not interested in seeing the scenery.

"Sorry!" the Doctor calls into the diner as he stumbles inside, gesturing broadly as he spots River. "Hello, hello!" He moves to her quickly, and slips into the booth with a smile. "Nothing to eat?" he prompts her.

"You sorted it all out, then," she says, vaguely pleased. "Diaries?"

"Yes, yes, yes," the Doctor agrees, and props his elbows up as she pulls out her TARDIS diary to page through it. "Are you all right?" he asks her, before she can proceed.

Her smile fades, her hands a bit loose on the diary. "Why did you do it?" she asks, before she can help it.

His own smile dims. "What?" His voice goes gentle. "What did I do?"

River shouldn't have said anything. She knows she shouldn't have said anything. It's too late now, though. "Why did you have me save him?"

"I think we're out of sync," the Doctor admits. "Because I don't know what we're talking about."

"Dammit," leaves her mouth, then she laughs, overwhelmed. "Every Doctor I meet won't say a thing. Is this a game to you? What he did, what he's going to do?"

"Spoilers," he tries, voice more tender. "River. Whatever it is, I'll help you sort it. Just ask me."

"I called you!" River snaps off before she can help it, then she presses her face into her hands. "Why didn't you answer?" she mutters.

"River." His tone goes firm. "I haven't heard from you since the HMS Indira."

Her breath stops in her chest. "I sent you a coded hologram," she says, desperately trying to collect herself. "More than one, to the coordinates I tracked the en – well, spoilers."

"After the Indira," the Doctor checks.

She nods. "It's been two relative years and you haven't referenced a single one," she confesses. "Did you not get any of them?"

He shakes his head, concern plain in his face. "River," he says, urgent, "you need to tell me what's going on."

River balks. "Sweetie," she starts.

"I have a very bad feeling about this," he says, to the point. "Tell me."

How much can she share? How dangerous is it for her to keep it to herself? More to the point: if her Doctor has never received a message in two relative years, then who has?

"Have you sent me any envelopes?" she asks, soft.

"Not yet." He's watching her closely, restraining concern. "Not since Lake Silencio."

"It was your handwriting." She swipes a hand over her face. "I know it was your handwriting." And she knows the time is near for him. What time does he have left, to play these kind of games? "This you, I mean. Your big ridiculous swoopy letters."

"There's time enough for me to do whatever is bothering you," the Doctor says, openly worrying now. "Did I make a mistake, River?"

She realizes, and icy fear runs through her. _The letters._ They were on the TARDIS when he escaped the Mainframe.

A stable time loop would be nothing for a Time Lord to establish.

"I'm so sorry," River says finally. "I'm so sorry for what's going to happen."

The Doctor takes her hand and squeezes it.

"Whatever happened," he says, "whatever I did, or you did, it's all fine. You know I can handle myself, and we can do it together."

"Something terrible is coming," she says, and meets his gaze. "It might not be today, or ten relative years from now. But I did this."

"I forgive you," the Doctor says, and gently brings her hand to his mouth to kiss it, never breaking eye contact.

Her smile is reflexive. Is his pure forgiveness enough?

"Come along," she says, automatically playful. "Let's go have some _fun_."

"Staying in or going out?" he asks, just barely managing to mask his concern, his love, in her ridiculous sweet Doctor's not-smooth smoothness.

"Oh, take a guess," River says, and the smirk comes to her face much more easily. She releases his hand and slips out of the booth, striding ahead, her Doctor behind her.

She needs a distraction before the storm she's unleashed comes to her door, and none is better than him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The bitch is back.
> 
> Also, shit's about to get weird and extremely speculative.

**It is easier to forgive an enemy than a friend. - William Blake**

River puts her stockinged feet up on the nearby table as she skims through the local time's news.

Things have been quiet, insofar as things are quiet in River's life. When exactly she ends up dropping into the Doctor's timestream is always slightly variable, but she hasn't sought him out since the diner in Chicago, a few months in relative time.

It was hard to look him in the face, and she's a practiced liar. It's uncomfortable to feel that exposed. She doesn't like it. Even if she doesn't like keeping her distance from him, it's probably for the best.

It's easier to stay in her home century and enjoy herself. When she wants something simple to do, she hunts down a man to play with. When she wants a challenge, she finds a woman. When she really wants a challenge, she drags them on an adventure.

River very rarely finds the cleverest, as the cleverest are rare, and reminders of the cleverest of all are what she's trying to avoid. Clever enough is fine. Stupid is unacceptable, at least for anything other than a roll in bed. Something in the middle is what she needs.

For now, she's alone, and that's just fine. It's for the best that she stops to find focus every once in a while. She's about to toss the data pad aside until she sees the bounty bulletin, and her hand goes a little slack as she zeroes in on it. It's a simple message with a coded packet attached, which she has to assume includes more detail on what exactly someone would be getting into:

_The person to bring the Master's corpse to Jahoo Air Base VI will receive six billion yuen and legal immunity against any comers._

Out of habit, she downloads the packet; at first it shows nothing she doesn't already know, a spotty history of the Master's conquests, and only pictures of the last face of his she's seen, with some vague suggestions about where he might have last been located. Then the list populates with things she hasn't seen from prior research: a government overthrown, a civilization wiped out, monsters released upon innocents with one man holding the leash. Guilt starts spooling out in her head, and she's not fond of the feeling.

One thing is clear: she has to do this. Even if it's a trap, that means he'll be there and she'll have a second chance.

"Suppose I'll be finding out either way, won't I," she muses softly.

She can do this. She's not the fool he first met, not anymore. He made sure of that.

* * *

Her TARDIS lands on Sancta Sophia with relative ease. She sweeps outside, her skirt in hand, and gives a little twirl, pleased, ready and waiting for the silly girl's arrival.

It doesn't take long for the Church to realize she's there, and Tasha Lem is at the head of the welcoming committee. Tasha's eyes are glittering with interest as she waves the guard away and strides forward, soft violet dust rising from her footsteps across the desert ground before the Sanctum.

"To what do I owe the pleasure?" Tasha asks, the faintest smile on her face.

She's so funny. "Oh, darling," she drawls, "I wanted to deliver my message in person. I thought I owed it to you after everything we've been through."

"I didn't think you ever took account of debts," Tasha says, mild but clearly teasing.

"This isn't a debt." Missy could not be more pleased at the clearest thing in the moment: the game is still afoot. "This is me being _polite_. No one appreciates social graces these days." She feigns a pout.

Tasha tilts her head just enough. "And what is your message?" she asks, with little inflection.

All graciousness disappears from her voice now. "You must not interfere. No matter the temptation. It all goes as planned. Do you understand me?"

"You don't know how it goes," Tasha says, amusement seeping into her expression.

"I have a very good idea," Missy says, a knife's edge flashing in her voice. "You will obey me."

Tasha contemplates her, her smile barely there but her desire to laugh clear in her posture, the tilt of her hips. "Have I ever?"

"Do nothing." Missy gestures in a broad gesture of mock-goodwill. "That's all I came to say! Do you need anything from me, dear?"

"Did you want to stay?" Tasha asks, an easy parry. "Could I expect you to do less than burn the place to ashes?"

"Oh, I'm fine on my own for now," Missy says, sly and cheery. "I'll see you soon, love."

"I know you will," Tasha says; her smile is razor-thin. "Have fun."

"I always do." Missy manages to keep the laughter from bubbling up in her, but twirls again before posing for Tasha's benefit with a smirk; Tasha's eyebrows flick up, and, pleased, Missy saunters off towards her TARDIS in plain, giddy anticipation.

* * *

She wakes in a panic, immediately tensed against the harsh metal floor where she seems to have collapsed. She doesn't recognize her surroundings from the vaguest skim from her place on the floor and tries to sit up, her skirts piled around her, but a device is attached to her head; the connections yank her back as she attempts to move.

This doesn't help the panic at all. She pulls the device off, her heart pounding hard in her chest, and pushes herself up, staring around at the expanse of the control room she's in. She turns to face what's clearly the cluttered console, then flinches as a hologram of a man appears six feet to her right.

"I suppose you're feeling a bit disoriented," the man muses. "You know, you put up quite a good fight, or else I wouldn't have needed to drug you quite so heavily. Don't worry. Your memory will come back in a moment or two."

In a snap, she feels pieces of herself that were missing coming together, and she stares at the hologram, fear mounting.

"Kirla Polask," the man muses. "You used to be quite notable, before you settled back down with that family of yours. How disappointing. I'm going to give you a chance to be useful again." He smiles broadly, a troubling expression to see. "The terms of our agreement are simple. I am the Master, and you will obey me. If you don't? I'll kill both your parents and your, ah, _remaining_ brother. Are we understood?"

Kirla's fingers tighten into the fabric of her jacket. She remembers the bomb leaving Ansen a bloody mess, and _the Master_ standing outside the wreckage of their ship, laughing, before he activated something on his wrist to disappear into thin air.

It's a hologram, but she still won't let it see a single tear escape her eyes.

"You'll notice there's a vortex manipulator on your wrist," the Master says, offhand. "I'll be monitoring you and contacting you through that device. Oh, and another thing. Check your pocket, and handle what you find _very_ , very carefully."

Kirla's hands shake, but she checks her pockets anyway; she pulls out a worn metal timepiece with intricate carvings along its surface that she doesn't recognize.

"This is a weapon," the Master goes on, "and one I want you to deploy at a very specific time. This has to remain hidden _until that moment_. I have them both, Miss Polask, and if you breathe a word of this to a single person, I will know, and their deaths will _not_ be slow. Do you understand?"

What choice does she have? She remains perfectly still.

The hologram of the Master tilts his head as he considers her.

"You were once a formidable spy," he says. "You'd better not disappoint me. Shake off that rust and go face your mark." He gestures. "Be yourself; she does love a soft heart." The hologram flicks off, and the room is dead silent.

Kirla crams the timepiece deep into her pocket, and wastes no time bolting through the door she sees only one hundred feet away. The door slams shut after her with a terrible sound.

Her boots strike sand, the heat hits her, then she manages to stop herself and shades her eyes so she can actually see ahead of her.

A woman stands a distance away, dressed in all black, clearly armed, with curled hair for days.

"I," Kirla says, and her throat stops.

Her mark. What does he expect her to do now? No joke on rust, she supposes, and shifts back a step, staring at the woman whose eyebrows are now raised.

"Who are you?" Kirla calls over to her.

The woman strides over, pulling out a sonic device as she does to scan her. Kirla's shoulders tense. "What are you doing?" she asks, terse.

The woman lowers the device. "We need to talk," she says, more casually than her posture would indicate. "I'm River Song, and I need to know everything about why you were in that TARDIS."

Kirla looks at her for a brief pause. "That what?" she tries.

River sighs. "Come with me," she says. "It's not safe here. He could be back at any moment."

The thought is enough to make her immediately nod, and she averts her gaze as she follows River through the desert, to the ship parked a safe distance from the Master's.

* * *

River is good at containing curiosity, so she waits until the woman is ready to talk, taking off from the Laiwyn Desert without prompting her in any way. It takes about four minutes of flight before the woman clears her throat and speaks. "Go on," she says. "Ask your questions."

River doesn't wait. "What's your name?"

"Kirla Polask." There's some terrible pull in Kirla's voice, one that makes River's chest threaten to ache. "You wanted to know why I was on that ship."

"Yes," River confirms.

There's a brief silence before Kirla speaks, careful. "He captured me. Drugged me."

She has a bad feeling about all of this. "Why would he do that?"

"To get information, I suppose." Kirla pauses. "I have a lot of information."

Despite everything, River's mouth turns into a slight smile. "What kind of information?" she presses.

"I used to work for the special operations of the United Planetary Force." It perks her interest immediately, but Kirla's going on. "I retired four years ago, but I still have contacts, and I still know more than most working for the UPF now."

"What did he ask you?" River asks, to the point. "What specifically did he want to know?"

Kira balks. "I don't know," she admits. "I don't remember much before I came out of the ship and saw you."

River debates her next step. "Are you telling me the whole truth, Kirla?" She doesn't miss a beat before adding, "I can't help you unless you tell me the whole truth."

There's dead silence in the ship for a moment, then Kirla says, tone flat, "I don't remember what he asked me. All I know is that if he didn't want me to be free he wouldn't have allowed me to escape."

It's a chilling point. "And why would he set you free?"

"Some sort of twisted game." Kirla's expression is weary. "He must want me to warn the UPF. I imagine it's some sort of trigger for whatever he's planning."

River weighs the situation, then glances at Kirla. "I'm going to drop you off somewhere safe. I'll handle this. Where are you from?"

Kirla shakes her head without hesitation. "No. I can't go back."

"Why not?" River needles.

"Would _you_ go back to your family if the Master had his eye on you?" Kirla fires back. "If you were one of his chess pieces?"

River hesitates, only for a moment. "Kirla, I can't," she starts.

Kirla looks unimpressed, a daunting look to respond to from that face. "I was _special operations_ with the UPF. You think I can't manage the Master if I see him coming?"

"Only one person can actually manage him," River says pointedly, "and for now I may have the best chance at containing him, but it won't be safe for you."

Kirla's mouth twists into something angry, troubling. "I can't go back, and I'm not going back until he gets what he deserves."

That makes River pause. "What did he do?" she asks, voice slightly softer.

"It doesn't matter," Kirla says, sharp, emotional now. "I'm coming with you."

River looks away, unable to keep her gaze on the expression on Kirla's face. She's seen that expression. She's caused that expression.

"We'll see," she says, and resets her course. "I think he may have abandoned the TARDIS for now, he must know I can track it. He'll be using fast and dirty travel now, harder to track. It's going to be a trip."

"How fun," Kirla says, half-joking, half-acidic.

River smiles faintly, an expression split halfway between unhappiness and concern, and prepares a flight path to a neutral planet while she formulates a plan.

* * *

There's too much at stake right now for River to let go of this task. It's her fault that the Master is free. Whatever the Master did to Kirla Polask, whatever she's hiding, it's River's fault. She's not one for guilt, usually, but this is different. It's one thing to lose control and cause damage, that's a hazard of being a former psychopath; you can make amends for that. You can't make amends for the harm someone else has done when you could have prevented it.

They've planet-hopped three times as River digs into research. It hasn't been simple by any measure, because the bastard's been incredibly good at covering his tracks. Kirla's comfortably resting in a plush chair across from her in the suite they've obtained, watching her work. River speaks without looking up. "You're curious."

"You've cut me out," Kirla responds mildly.

River restrains a sigh. "This is my specialty. Trust me."

"I could be a help if you'd let me." Kirla's about as sardonic as River has heard her.

Now River does sigh. "Your contacts may be a poisoned well, depending on what he pulled from your head."

"He can't possibly know everything I know," Kirla points out. "Not everyone I know."

"He could also be posing as one of your contacts, attempting to lure you out," River persists. "He's a master of disguise."

"River," Kirla starts, tone flattening.

"It's only been two days," River says patiently. "You can help me when we get there, we've got half a plan, that's better than no plan, isn't it?"

Kirla kicks one of her boots off in an impatient gesture. "Can you understand why I might be frustrated?"

"Yes," River decides upon, and looks up at last. "You're angry."

"Of course I'm angry." Kirla's expression has twisted into something awful, as though the depth of her anger is maddening, a riptide threatening to overwhelm her. "You wouldn't understand."

"Hm." River sets down the datapad and rests her hands carefully on the desk. "We won't know until you tell me."

Kirla's gaze flicks away from her, to nowhere in particular, anywhere else. "I don't know why he blew up the airstrip. But he did. One hundred dead, including my brother." She barely misses a beat. "He was targeting me. I didn't know at the time, but now I know."

"I see," River says, soft.

"He had just returned from active service, and chose to visit me." Kirla's tone could cut glass. "I don't expect my parents will ever forgive me, and I can't blame them."

No one has ever said she's good at comfort, but she knows one thing for sure. "Love forgives."

"That's a soft sort of phrase to hear from you," Kirla says, her jaw tense. "From the woman who means to kill the Master."

River decides not to take the bait. "I speak from experience."

Kirla speaks, strained. "I didn't take you for one with much by way of love."

"It is _terribly_ complicated, dear," River says, with a light smile. "I don't like revenge as a motive. It's too... flammable."

" _Flammable_ ," Kirla fires back, unimpressed.

"One spark from your enemy and you go up in flames." River watches Kirla. "Don't you think?"

"I can't go back until he's dead," Kirla says, nearly steady again. "And I need to go back."

River is quiet for a moment, and moves to where Kirla sits. She smooths Kirla's dark, lustrous hair, and presses a kiss to her forehead, her chest tightening at the way the woman's eyes fall shut and her expression softens. "This won't be easy," she says gently. "And it won't be fast. But it will come."

Kirla's voice is nearly flat, but still emotional. "Do you swear?"

"I only swear to one person," River says, honest but careful. "I mean to destroy that man, I'll tell you that."

Kirla's sharp eyes move back to her. "That's not good enough."

"That's the best I can do for you." River strokes her hair again, and Kirla stares ahead at the elaborate carpet on the floor in front of her. "Now," River says, tone lightening, "wine?"

Kirla doesn't seem to want to switch to this topic, but River has always been good at forcing the point, and she speaks. "What do we have?"

"A good vintage! 5199." River moves away to snatch the bottle from where it's cooling. "Come, sit with me," she encourages Kirla.

Kirla kicks off her other boot, an apparent gesture to get out some of the frustration, and stands to move next to River on the sofa. River opens the bottle and kicks back as she drinks straight from the bottle.

"Oh really," Kirla says; there's a touch of dry amusement in her voice now. River likes that.

"We're beyond class now," River teases, and offers the bottle to her. "We're going to kill a man."

"I suppose you have a point," Kirla allows, and drinks freely from the bottle. "Hm, good," she notes.

"I'm a woman of fine taste." River smirks, and slips her arm around Kirla as they drain the bottle with mild amusement with each other.

As the bottle grows lighter, Kirla's defenses seem to lower, which is honestly what River was hoping for. She nuzzles into River's shoulder, vulnerable, something terrible obviously nesting in her chest. River sets the bottle aside and presses kisses from Kirla's forehead to her cheek, taking in the way Kirla's breath catches as a cue. She draws Kirla's face to hers and kisses her, once and again.

"River," Kirla murmurs as they break just far enough from each other, warm wine-stained breaths mingling and her eyes drifting shut at the touch of River's hand to her cheek. "I..."

"You need this," River says, soft as she can manage. "Let me make you feel better."

Kirla's breath is shaky, a strange moment from such a terse and careful woman. River kisses her again, thoroughly, all tongues and insinuation, and Kirla presses against her and into the kiss in surrender.

River's mouth drifts down to Kirla's neck, with firm kisses then nips to draw out the heaviness in Kirla's breaths. Kirla's fingers move into her hair as River's hands press up the fabric of Kirla's skirt until it hitches enough over her thighs. She undoes the few clasps on Kirla's shirt deftly to get at her breasts, and draws one of her nipples into her mouth just as her fingers slip beneath her knickers.

"Oh," Kirla gasps, at the pressure of River's fingers against her clit and her tongue teasing her nipple. "Oh, good lord – "

River moves her mouth to her other breast, gently using her teeth until she carefully grips one of her nipples between them, her fingers working her until Kirla's hips begin to jerk. She's soaking wet within a minute or two, and River yanks her knickers down her thighs so she can push two fingers firmly inside of her.

"Oh," Kirla chokes out again, and River kisses her harshly as she starts to fuck her with her fingers, her other hand pinching and gripping her breasts. Kirla kisses her back something fierce, making wonderful sounds against her mouth as her pussy tightens and throbs against River's fingers. It's only a few pointed hard thrusts into her after that, and Kirla arches and comes in a rush, her entire pussy wet and trembling against River's fingers before she reluctantly withdraws.

Kirla is shaky as River thoughtfully slips her fingers into her mouth. "River," she starts.

"Do you give as good as you get, Miss UPF?" River teases without hesitation.

Kirla is on her within moments, desperate kisses on her face and mouth and down from her neck to her collarbone. "Good," River murmurs, and Kirla makes a soft sound against her skin before sinking to the ground between River's knees.

River shifts her arse so Kirla can slip off her knickers to her ankles, and hitches up her skirt. Kirla drops firm kisses along the soft skin of River's thighs near worshipfully, and River's head falls back; she slips her fingers into Kirla's hair as Kirla's fingers split open the lips of her pussy and her mouth presses against it. Her tongue teases River's clit and River murmurs soft assent as Kirla moves her tongue lightly along her slit.

Her fingers grip into Kirla's hair at the fervent attention lavished on her clit, the pressure again and again first with her tongue then with her thumb; her tongue rushes over River's entrance again and again until she's desperate to be full. "Fuck," River gasps, her thighs tightening against Kirla's face. "Fuck me, fuck me."

Kirla makes a sort of keening sound before keeping on with her tongue, but spreads her legs enough to push her fingers slowly, agonizingly slowly, inside of River. "Come on," River grinds out, and she can feel Kirla's smile against her thigh as she starts to fuck River with her fingers.

River tries to ride against Kirla's fingers, arching against each thrust, but she's teasing River now, and it's driving her mad. "Ugh," she gasps, then Kirla starts to pound her fingers in and out of River while her mouth still works against her clit, and it's all unbearably good.

"Come," Kirla says, just loudly enough to hear, and River is usually one to be contrary but she's _so close._ "Ngh," River gets out, then rides against each thrust of Kirla's fingers, their perfect rhythm with her tongue against her clit, until she comes hard with a jerk, again, gasping.

There's a wonderful silence for a moment, then Kirla murmurs against her thigh. "Bit of a rest and some more?"

River starts to laugh, a throaty sound. "For sure, love."

* * *

River Song is the most exciting person Kirla has met, and that's saying something from a member of UPF special ops. They tear through the galaxy in a search for bits and pieces that will bring them closer to their target – and that's the truth of it, _just_ bits and pieces so far – and River wrecks her every morning, every night, until she laughs and aches.

All that said, the most frustrating thing about being with River Song is that she clearly needs to be the smartest person in a room. The Master was right about one thing; even if Kirla hasn't been a spy for some years, she's still more than capable, and she deserves some credit for that.

Still, River makes every effort to be on top of every situation, in a near compulsive way. Kirla is trying to become accustomed to sitting back, but eventually withdraws as River breaks through the defenses of the government computer that holds the information they need.

It's good timing to be ignored, because the vortex manipulator on her wrist chirps. Kirla's breath catches sharply in her throat, and she hurries into an empty room, slamming the door behind her so she can receive the message in private.

"One small warning, Miss Polask," comes the Master's voice from the manipulator, the soundwaves rippling on the screen. "Don't fall for her _wiles_ , or you'll be bedding the woman whose husband set me free. Are you so sure you can trust someone who's told so many lies?"

The message cuts off there. Kirla stares at the vortex manipulator.

There's no way to know the truth. The Master is a villain and a liar, but River Song is as much a manipulator and conwoman as Kirla once was. It's an unenviable position, to be trapped between two liars.

The good news is, after years of training in what the UPF called 'inquiry', Kirla has some small ability to press those with a little conscience. She tightens her resolve and her posture and strides back to where River appears to just be finishing up.

"All right?" Kirla asks, a little pointed.

River glances back, then finishes one last keystroke and withdraws the drive she's plugged into the console. "Done," she says brightly, and whirls on Kirla. "A drink?"

"I suppose," Kirla says, with clear effort at being noncommittal.

River pauses only for an instant, but there's no denying the tension Kirla is explicitly drawing between them. The security klaxons begin to blare, and she raises her eyebrows at Kirla before pressing the teleport on her vortex manipulator. Kirla does the same, and follows River without hesitation into the ship.

Takeoff goes with rigid silence between them, until River says, mock-casual, "Well, go on, love."

It's time to pry a lever into River's lies and pull them apart. "I want to know about your husband."

River puts on a contemplative face, but Kirla can see the concern in the set of River's shoulder and head. "Which one?" she says, flashing a brief grin.

"I think you know the one," Kirla says, vaguely unimpressed.

"Ah, well," River says with exaggerated wryness, "some husbands are more manageable than others."

"River." Kirla doesn't bother with any shade of amusement or pleasantness. "I'm asking you. As a friend."

"What have you heard?" River's still trying to be playful about this. Kirla forces herself steady. "I don't want to bore you with unnecessary details you already know."

"He's associated with the Master, River, that's what I've heard." River doesn't react, and that in and of itself is a reaction. "Is it true?" Kirla presses.

"Associated may be the word," River says after the slightest pause. "It's very complicated."

"Uncomplicate it," Kirla suggests, tone brooking no argument.

River tilts her head, thoughtful, and rests back against the captain's chair. "They're old friends," she says, "who are more alike than either will admit. They love each other more than they love anyone else, and trust each other more than any other being in the universe. But the Master can't make himself stop, and the Doctor will never put him down." Her fingers drum on the armrests. "That's what I'm meant to do for him."

Kirla firms her voice, needing this answer more than anything. "Did the Doctor release him?"

Silence stretches thin between them, then River speaks. "I don't know."

"River." Kirla is, admittedly, losing her patience.

"I don't know," River repeats, more sharply. "All I know is... he always finds a way out. No matter the cost."

Kirla presses her fingers to her temples, exhausted already. "I don't believe you."

"Why do you think I would lie to you?" River's voice softens, just enough, and Kirla knows when she's being played. "After everything?"

Kirla takes the moment to draw an uncomfortable silence again. "Because you have something to hide," she says finally.

"I don't know how to prove to you that I'm serious about killing him." River's clearly getting frustrated. "What do you need from me?"

She forces her breaths calm. "I'm not asking whether or not you mean to kill him, River, I'm asking what you're hiding from me."

River shrugs lightly. "Everyone's hiding something, Kirla. The question is whether or not it matters in the end."

Kirla speaks with finality. "It matters to me."

River is either going to accept her as a victim or recognize her as a con in this instant, and Kirla has no idea which one is more true in that moment either. At long last, River says, "The Master is my responsibility."

"I would think he's the Doctor's," Kirla says, brisk. "If he's to blame."

River gestures dismissively. "The Doctor will find some half-measure instead of doing what needs to be done. He's... he's a good man, mostly, and that's his biggest failing in the long run."

To hell with it. Enough is enough. "I'm tired of being your pet, River," Kirla blurts out, and sets her jaw, committing to the moment.

River jerks in her seat, surprised, and turns the chair so she can better see her. "What?"

"I'm here." Kirla spreads her hands in an open gesture. "Use me."

River exhales. "You know as well as I do that – he's expecting you to move against him."

"So you drag me along?" Kirla presses, unimpressed. "To, what, to defend me? To use me when the time comes, as your own chess piece?"

River's smile doesn't contain much by way of amusement. "Do you have a problem with being protected?"

Kirla's mouth curls into an expression she's not enjoying. "I can defend myself."

"If I release you and he takes you, uses you until there's nothing left, Kirla, then that's – " River gestures sharply. "That's on me. Do you understand?"

There it is, there's the weakness. "Just admit it," Kirla says, strained. "Admit that you want me with you."

River glances away, and the pause stretches just a moment too long before she speaks again. "Is that all you want me to say?"

Kirla keeps her gaze hot on River, intent to make her feel it. "That's all I want you to say."

"I think you already know."

She doesn't react to that, and goes on. "If you mean that," she says, "you'll stop this Doctor of yours from getting in the way." She makes a pointed pause, then. "If you really mean to do what you say you're going to do."

River shakes her head, then seems to realize what she's done. "That's easier said than done," she covers.

"You love him," Kirla says, in razor tones. "You love the man whose heart is too soft to save millions of lives from a monster."

"You would love him, too," River says, all forced cavalier. "He's that way."

She scoffs. "I would never love a weak person."

"He's compassionate." River releases a short laugh. "Very slightly different, that."

"Compassion is meant for victims, not perpetrators, River."

River makes a sound of vague frustration. "What do you want from me?"

"For you to accept what we need to do." Kirla twirls her hair around her finger. "We use your Doctor as bait to catch the madman who loves him."

River scoffs immediately. "No. He won't fall for that."

"Oh, I think people do all kinds of silly things for someone they love," Kirla says, feigning airiness, " _especially_ if they're _compassionate_."

There's only the slightest beat before River says, "No."

" _River_." Kirla's anger is seeping out before she can help it.

River shakes her head again, gorgeous curls drifting around her neck. "He'll get in the way. And I don't know that I can stop him from doing what he always does."

"You're River Song," Kirla says, terse. "Surely you can think of something."

River's mouth briefly forms a terse line, then she says, "Let me see what I can do."

"I want you to understand something," Kirla cuts in, abruptly inspired.

"What." River's tone is flat.

"Someone who doesn't love you enough to keep the monster from your door doesn't love you at all."

A dreadful quiet settles between them, then River pushes herself up and goes into the quarters, shutting the door. Kirla moves into the captain's chair, swallowing down her doubts after the slightest glance at the vortex manipulator on her wrist.

* * *

River closes her eyes, gets her breaths level, and manages just enough of an unaffected smile before she begins to record into the manipulator.

"It's far past time," she says, and trusts her instincts as she goes on. "We need to put him down. I'm using my last card to find him, and I want you there with me." The words escape her mouth before she can stop them: "You owe me this, Doctor." She doesn't like the look that she feels cross her face, and cuts off the hologram recording before he can see much else, coding the coordinates into the background.

He won't answer this one either.

She sinks back against the wall, drawing a knee up to her chest onto the bed.

Rule #1: The Doctor lies.

She should have known. He couldn't bear to free the Master himself, couldn't bear the consequences of the mess that would be made of Gallifrey if he appeared to the Master himself, after all, so he released his pet sociopath, who has no qualms, who owes him everything.

The monster is at everyone's door. And, maybe, it isn't her responsibility after all.

She drops her face into her knee and bites back the doubt, intent to be River Song, no matter the pain or the loneliness.

* * *

Though the Papal Mainframe is mostly run from its flagship, it does own a small planet, known to all but its native inhabitants as Sancta Sophia, named after the dark marble fortress-temple that sprawls across one-fifth of its landmass.

Even though they're merely breaking through the orbit, Kirla can already see its spires, its huge cathedral glittering with stained glass, all beautiful human achievements.

She hasn't spent a lot of time investigating the Papal Mainframe – the UPF generally leaves the Church to its business unless provoked – but she knows this much from the biography of Tasha Lem assigned to her in school. The Church is a force, that much everyone knows, but she doesn't know if it justifies the way River gradually tenses each kilometer closer to their arrival on the planet.

"You've been here before," Kirla breaks the silence with.

"No." River offers the faintest smile, with little good humor behind it. "But the Church knows me."

"I suppose," Kirla muses, contemplating her. "You seem like the sort of person to know."

River laughs, dry, and unbuckles herself from the seat as they touch down. "Let's just see how this goes, shall we?"

"It's your plan," Kirla says in clear (if friendly) mockery of River's easy confidence, and raises her eyebrows archly at River as she pushes herself to her feet. "What?"

"Trust me." River's tone firms. "It'll all come together."

"One way or another," Kirla says, briefly holding River's gaze with her own.

River turns away, her curls following the motion. "Come along, Polask!" Kirla releases a sigh and follows her off the ship, their heeled footsteps immediately kicking up violet dust as they walk towards the massive gates of Sancta Sophia some distance away.

"Are you going to tell me the plan?" Kirla asks, more cheerfully dismissive than she feels.

"Ah, what fun would that be?" River prompts her, more a rhetorical question than anything.

She supposes that was to be expected. "Are we in danger?"

River is comfortably flippant, now. "Everyone's always in danger. I thought you knew that."

It's not comforting, though she knows it's true. They stop within sight of the ornate doors that lead into the city-state of Sancta Sophia, and Kirla taps her foot. "Well?" she says, pointed.

"Oh, just give it a moment." 

There's half a laugh in River's voice. Kirla tries not to bristle a bit. "What exactly are we waiting for?"

River seems to be contemplating what to say next. "The bait."

The gates open before the words completely leave her mouth, though, and Kirla's breath halts in her chest. A phalanx of Church troops moves forward and split position to reveal the Mother Superious. 

Tasha Lem's eyes land on River and don't dare look away. "River Song," she says, voice dipping low.

"I can make amends for what I did," River says, steady, "if you give me one small favor."

"And why would I do that?" Tasha asks, her head tilting just so.

Kirla is surprised to see that River is masking a professional persona over plain distress. "Because I want him dead as much as you do."

"Forgive me if I don't trust you," Tasha says, and seems to genuinely mean it. "You came here under false pretenses before, unleashing that creature upon my people – "

"No, no, no," River cuts her off with. "There were no false pretenses."

"You sought information and refused to give it when you could have simply _asked_ , River." Tasha's voice gains an edge. "You had him in your grasp and you released him."

Kirla's stomach is starting to turn. "What is she talking about?" she demands of River.

River won't look at her, gaze still on Tasha Lem. "I'm asking for a chance to make things right," she says.

"I need a better word than yours," Tasha answers, tone crisping.

River's breath comes sharp from her mouth, a desperate press in her chest and shoulders as though she's been physically seized. "Time enough for that."

"Oh?" Tasha asks, with mild interest.

River checks her vortex manipulator, and rolls her eyes. "I suppose he can't always be on time," she says.

"The Doctor comes just when he needs to," Tasha says, with light amusement. "Either you're early or he's left you on your own."

Kirla seizes River's arm. "Enough," she snaps off. "I need to know what's going on."

River tenses against the touch, then looks Kirla in the face. "The Papal Mainframe will give us our last pieces on where and when the Master's gone. He's using his TARDIS again, that's the only way he's hidden this long, and all I need is access to their records to track the ship. Two hours at most."

"And the rest?" Kirla is bristling, prickling, all her worst traits come to bear. "What is she talking about?"

"We don't have time to explain," River says, and her tone brooks no argument.

Kirla doesn't care. "Make time. We're stuck waiting for your _precious husband_ as it is."

"Shall I tell her, River?" None of the books manage to capture Tasha Lem's low, playful, dangerous sing-song. "Or will you pluck up the courage?"

River is silent for a long moment; Tasha breaks the quiet with a sharp laugh. In the tension, Kirla's vortex manipulator chirps, and the Master's voice cuts through without her activation.

" _Now_."

Kirla doesn't have to think twice about what he means, only about what he's asking her to do; River's gun is in her hands as Kirla's heart stammers out an erratic pattern, but Kirla pulls out the pocketwatch before River can stop her and presses the button to open it.

Her breath literally stops in her throat as the golden light seeps into her every pore, and she shudders, on her knees, as it all comes back, every glorious blood-stained moment.

The pocketwatch drops to the ground with a tinny sound, and Missy begins to laugh, hard, looking up into River's desperate, overwhelmed face.

"No," the poor thing says, then her gun is immediately aimed back at Missy's face.

Missy comes back to her feet, at first greeting the barrel of the gun with mild amusement before meeting River's gaze. "What a _trip_ it's been," she drawls. "Thank you so very much for the ride." She winks, exaggerated.

"Mother Superious," River calls, voice half-trembling, "you can't let her in."

"I understand," Tasha returns, unmoved.

Missy's smile is broad as she steps forward, unafraid of the sound of River activating the gun. She slips casually forward until the gun is to her head. "Bang," she whispers.

"You've always been an idiot," River snaps softly back.

"Idiot? No," Missy says breezily. "Arrogant, yes. Are you going to kill me or not?"

Anger is starting to break through in River's eyes, some beautiful darkness tightening in her face. "That was the plan."

"Don't be boring," Missy advises, and flicks the gun away from her face with an easy gesture. "Meet me inside, will you? That's a love."

River fires, but Missy blocks her with an easy energy shield from her manipulator, and walks at a playful, confident pace towards the Church troops as they begin to fire on her.

Violet sand explodes around her as she walks forward, untouched, and slams down an electrified web device from her pocket, stomping down on it to send bolts of electricity rippling through the Church troops. Tasha Lem stands perfectly still, the electricity coursing through her with only a hand fisted to indicate that she's feeling anything at all, and Missy idly blocks River's gunfire from behind her before she moves close to Tasha.

"Pardon," she says, soft, insinuating, and leans in for a firm, biting kiss. Tasha seizes a hand into her hair as they kiss, then yanks her back with force.

"You're a monster," Tasha whispers.

"Darling," Missy says, voice dipped low, "so are you."

Tasha steps aside, her skirt sweeping behind her. Missy seizes a gun with glee from an unconscious Church soldier to fire four easy shots at River, winging her on the shoulder before she runs, half-skipping, into Sancta Sophia.

* * *

The gates of Sancta Sophia shut before River makes it there, and she releases a desperate, half-screaming sound, slamming her fist against the decorative metal before she whirls on Tasha Lem, who still lingers outside. "Let me in," she demands, voice shaking.

"Give it a moment," Tasha suggests, far more offhanded than she should be, and considers the device on her gloved wrist. "Any time now."

"What are you _doing_?" River seizes Tasha by the shoulders and slams her into the gates. "Why are you – how long have you – "

There's a chirping sound, and Tasha's smile is faint and unpleasant. "It's for you," she says.

River shoves her back against the gates and backs up two steps to check her vortex manipulator. A hologram projects in front of her: a beautiful, shapely young woman with sharp eyes, whose smile is too much like Tasha Lem's.

_You don't know my face, but I know your name. I know your crimes. I know who you love and who you want dead at all costs._

"What is this?" River presses Tasha, desperate.

"Watch," Tasha says mildly.

The woman in the hologram is going on. _'What Desmond underestimated, what he would always underestimate, was the lengths a father would go to find and protect his child. A father would raise armies and take on all comers to bring her back home. A father wouldn't care for revenge. He would only care that she would live a full and happy life with those she loved.'_

River can't pull in an easy breath, no matter how hard she tries.

_Amy wrote that for you. Do you remember the night she read it to you? Ovaltine in your favorite mug, her showing you her first gray hairs?_

The Master is killing people now, but River is rooted to the spot, trapped in confusion and memories.

 _So, now that we've got through that. You need to promise me something._ The hologram barely pauses. _You can't kill her._

The hologram blinks out. River stands still as stone for only a split second, then she swiftly moves and presses her gun to Tasha Lem's forehead.

"Let me in," she growls out.

Tasha just smiles, and snaps her fingers; the doors open, and River wastes no time rushing inside, following her instincts, the trail of dead and unconscious bodies, and the sound of chaos to find her prey.

She blows open the door in the basement with two practiced shots and bursts inside; a low laugh bubbles out of the woman she knew as Kirla as her gaze goes up to meet River and her gun, only for a moment, then she goes back to her work wiring something into the nearest console.

"Do you know where we are?" she asks, shrewd and mock-friendly all at once. "Do you know what this room holds?"

"I don't care," River grinds out, far past sarcastic comments and games now. She advances on the woman, the gun pressed firmly against her forehead again.

"Before you kill me," the woman says, voice smooth as river stones, "say my name."

"I don't _care_ ," River snaps off.

She frowns, exaggerated. "Oh, do be polite, from one Time Lady to another. Say my name."

The fury is too much for her, the exhaustion, the betrayal. River breathes out the name. "Master."

"I do like Missy now," she muses. "Far more fitting, don't you think? At least for now." She nuzzles the gun against her face, then shifts to draw it into her mouth, tongue moving silkily against the metal. River feels an icy rush of something horrible through her, and she shoves the gun harder into Missy's mouth.

"Mm," Missy purrs against the harsh treatment, and River yanks the gun out, firing twice less than centimeters from Missy's head before pacing back two steps and yanking a hand through her curls.

"No," River's voice grates out, and the desperate urge to laugh, to bleed and make bleed, rises along with her nausea. " _Bastard_ , how could you – "

"Easily," Missy says instantly, gaze calculating now. "What now, River Song? Will you do what you promised poor little Kirla? Will you kill the monster that haunted your imaginary friend in her sleep?"

It's too much. She fires into Missy's shoulder, blasting her hard against the wall, and the bright, mocking laughter that follows pushes River to shove her gun into her holster in a rapid motion. She flies against where Missy lies half-pressed against a now-bloodstained wall, and pins Missy there, thumb into the wound to make her squirm; Missy squirms up against the contact of her body at the torture, a smirk rising on her face, and River could scream.

"Stop," she demands, and slams Missy against the wall by the throat, strangling her with all the force a trained psychopath knows how to produce. Missy's eyelids flutter in plain pleasure, and a frustrated, horrible sound escapes River's mouth. She releases her and steps back to fire at her again, and again, nonlethal wounds that make Missy's gaze grow hotter and hotter until River can't bear it anymore.

"Is this what you want?" River's voice comes out smooth, acidic. "Blood and sex?"

"That's all I've ever wanted," Missy says, breathy and low.

"Fuck you," River fires back, and shoves her back against the wall to kiss her as hard as she can. Missy remains still against the contact, even as River manhandles her and shoves up her skirt, ripping halfway through her knickers to roughly shove fingers inside of her. She bites into Missy's shoulder as she pounds her fingers sharp and hard into her, then Missy breathes, " _Yes_ ," and a horrible arousal pours through River. She fucks Missy with as severe of strokes as she can, until Missy is thrusting back against each action, her teeth sharp in Missy's neck and shoulder. River shudders, desire burning through her as Missy's arousal makes her pussy slick, Missy's breaths short, gasping, until she comes, throbbing, around River's fingers.

"Good girl," Missy purrs, and River pulls away, shaking, fingertips scraping through her hair as she tries to think straight.

River doesn't know how long it is until Missy speaks again. "Do you know where we are?" she repeats.

"Where the fuck are we?" River says, low, overwhelmed.

" _This_ , is the Papal Mainframe," Missy says, breaths still heavy and thrilled. "The real Papal Mainframe."

River fires a look at her, and Missy rolls her eyes. "Tasha Lem," she says, "is the Papal Mainframe. Do I have to explain everything?"

It's too much to ask of her to put this all together in this moment, after what she's done, after what's just happened to her, but the pieces come together anyway, and she stares along the row of servers. "Missy," she says, completely flat.

"Boom," Missy says, with an accompanying playful gesture.

"No," River says, trying to firm her voice, but it doesn't quite work.

"You don't like her either," Missy says, easy but sardonic. "What do you care?"

"The Church already hates me." River's gaze hardens. "Because of you."

"Who cares?" Missy gestures, broad and cheeky. "Anyway. I'm to go. Time flies when you've placed a bomb." She pushes herself up as best as she can while bleeding from multiple wounds.

River is silent, unmoving, as Missy starts to move, then fires as many shots as she can into the open panel where the bomb is placed. The explosion is instantaneous, white-hot, and the pain would kill a lesser person. But she's River Song.

She hits the wall, bleeding, burned, among the wreckage, and passes out with bloodlust still burning in her heart as harshly as the flames around her.

* * *

The first thing River sees as her vision clears is the Doctor hovering over her. The next is the TARDIS med bay around her. She closes her eyes then, pressing them tightly shut, refusing to look at him.

"Hey," the Doctor tries, and his fingers gently stroke her face. It's too much, the light contact, after what she's done, and she fights back the horror, the mistakes, the guilt. "River. Come back to me," he presses.

River manages to generate a light inflection, despite it all. "Sorry. I've got to go." She pushes herself up to sit. "All healed up? I'm ready? I think so."

"River." The Doctor shakes his head, and gently takes her face in both hands. "We need to talk."

"I don't want to talk." River musters a small, teasing smile, her tone relatively light with some effort.

"Before you go." He holds her gaze. "I need to know that you're all right."

Easy enough to flirt on that one. "Sweetie, I'm _far better_ than all right, you know that."

"Stop." The Doctor almost never gets this tone, the angry one, the one mixed with too much concern and responsibility. "What happened? Tell me the truth."

"Spoilers," she whispers.

The frustration is palpable in his face, his breath, and he seizes her into a pointed kiss, awkward as they always are with him, until they're wrapped close together, her leg around his waist. She doesn't deserve this, she knows that, she's never deserved it, but he is and always has been everything.

When he just barely pulls back, the question plain in his eyes, the desperation to know, she just touches his face and gently shakes her head.

They kiss again, and again, the best answer either of them can give each other in any sort of measure of truth, until he's got her barely-there hospital garment off and she's shoved down his trousers.

He always kisses her when he fucks her, near nonstop, as though something might escape his mouth or hers that neither can bear to hear if they don't. She writhes up against him, his fingers firm against her breast and hips, her fingernails digging into his back sharply in return. He shudders a breath against her mouth, and she catches his lower lip between her teeth; he fucks her harder for that and she gasps, gripping the hospital bed behind her to keep from falling. "River," escapes his mouth, desperate, wanting, and she comes all at once, overwhelmed by it, blinking slowly as he comes inside of her.

He kisses her in the afterglow, slow, wanting, loving. She restrains the emotion that tries to escape, the self-loathing, the fear, the tears, and pulls him back against her.

"Again?" she murmurs into his ear.

His eyebrows flick up. "If you give me a minute."

River is nothing short of the queen of the redirect. All it takes is the right kind of kiss.

* * *

The TARDIS is quiet as the Doctor sprawls in a chair in the console room, kicking lightly at the bar beneath. Sleep hasn't been a friend of hers for a very long time, but it's been particularly difficult lately.

Guilt is an everpresent force in the Doctor's life. There are always things that go wrong and civilizations that fall, because even for a Time Lady there's not enough time in the world to save everyone from every evil. Sometimes she numbs herself to it, but this regeneration is much worse at it.

She is, however, just fine at mustering a smile. She manages one now, and tips her head back, thoughtful.

"Tea," she decides, and hops off of the chair.

The monitor flickers mere feet away. The Doctor goes to it without a second thought, and goes rigid at the sight of a ruffled, bloody Missy.

"I'll be perfectly honest with you," Missy says, verging on genuinely pleasant, for her, anyway. "I don't know when this is going to reach you. Bit rattled from the explosion, you know. You might want to check on Tasha Lem circa 5284, the poor dear might not be faring so well."

The Doctor's stomach twists, but Missy goes on with her message. "It's funny, you know," she says. "I've spent so very much time with that pet psychopath of yours, the gorgeous one, and she's absolutely pathetic. Terribly easy to break her heart into tiny little pieces and reduce her to what she truly is. It was beautiful, Doctor."

She's stock still as she abruptly puts the pieces together, her eyes threatening to grow wet, and reminds herself of timelines, the truth, what Missy truly was and became, at least for a little while. She aches, she misses her, and the slightest touch of self-loathing for even that smallest twinge wins over the day.

"Don't worry, dear." Missy winks, all derisive performance. "I never kill my toys so long as they're interesting. So. Keep her interesting, and I'll keep her alive."

"Stop," the Doctor says to the screen, soft, her hands gripping the console.

River is gone. Missy is gone. No humans can replace them, no matter how hard she tries.

She wipes her face, hurried, with a brisk smile, and sniffs away the loneliness. That smile has to take its place, even as a mask, if she's to find Yaz for a cuddle.

* * *

She was never one to believe in an afterlife, but she supposes a digital existence in the Library is as good of one as any. There are the children to look after, Evangelista to keep her company and her bed, and all of the books and research she could ever hope to know.

She's got her arm around a half-asleep Evangelista and a book open in her lap when it happens; a horrible jolt goes through her body, one that shouldn't, _shouldn't_ be possible, and she opens her mouth to scream, but nothing comes out as she's ripped into pieces – 

She awakes with a jerk, unable to move in the pod in which she's enclosed, and twists in some desperate effort beyond reason to have some small understanding of what's just happened. A frustrated scream erupts from her mouth, and as it fades she hears a man's laughter.

The pod opens slowly; the man stands over her, a dark man with dashing, half-scruffed facial hair in casual businesswear, his collar gently open without a tie. She stares up at him, and realization, recognition, dawns.

"Ah," he says, with clear pleasure at the look on her face. "Hello, dear."

"You were dead." She flinches at the sound of her voice. _She recognizes that voice._ "What, what have you done?"

He considers her. "What should I answer first?" She doesn't answer, just jerks against the tight quarters of the pod, and he goes on. "I die, I come back, it's something of a habit. You shouldn't be surprised." He gestures. "And I would expect some gratitude, you know. You were just a computer program when I found you in that dreadful place."

Will she ever see Evangelista again? She can't let grief overwhelm her. "Let me out," she says evenly, desperate to ignore the timbre of her voice, low and a natural sing-song that reminds her of times she's pushed back so far in her memory.

"Hm, yes," he muses. "Only... I do so enjoy when you say it."

She stares at him, gaze cool. "I'm not – "

The look in his eyes is even icier than hers. "You're alive. You owe me everything. Now say it."

"I saved your life," she fires back. "I think we're sorted."

"Ah, ah, you saved my life then you tried to kill me," he reminds her, chiding. "So _just say it_."

There's no way around it, is there. "Master," she says, level.

He tilts his chin up. "How lovely," he says, and tips the pod up so she can stumble out. Her legs are weak, so she stumbles forward into the wardrobe in the elaborate bedroom they seem to be camped out within, and takes the initiative to go to the mirror mere feet away. She stares into her new eyes, her new face.

He's behind her in a moment, his hand lightly on the small of her back. "A new life," he whispers. "A new name, my dear Tasha Lem."

She touches her face, so different without the elaborate makeup that has always served as the Mother Superious's perfect mask. The face looks so vulnerable, now, overwhelmed and near-frightened.

"Did you know?" Tasha's voice is dark and low. "Did you make me into her?"

"I didn't emulate Tasha Lem's body for you," the Master clarifies, nuzzling lightly into her cheek and neck, speaking softly against her skin. "This was just how the gene splicer randomly created you. You were always meant to be Tasha Lem."

There's a horrible numbness in her chest. "But you knew."

"I knew I had to bring you back." His teeth nip gently into her skin, and her eyes flutter closed. "You're not finished yet, my dear."

Of course, there are practical concerns about raising the Church to what it is, will be, and becoming Mother Superious. "What a terrible amount of work I have to do."

"Yes, yes," he whispers, "but not yet."

"You may be the Master," Tasha says, soft and warning, "but I will not obey you."

A light laugh escapes him, barely audible. "Oh, I'm depending on that."

She lashes out at him with the hand mirror on the table, but she's too weak to do much more than shatter it against his face; he just laughs, and seizes her by the wrists to pin her down on the bed. "Come now," he murmurs against her, a knee slipping between her thighs, "who are you trying to fool?"

"I'm a different woman," she fires back rapidly, but he's too much stronger than her right now, and she tilts her face away from his as he leans close, breath mingling with hers.

"I want you." The Master's stubble brushes her face as he nuzzles against her. "Play nice."

Tasha's breaths even out, her body shifting against the soft mattress beneath her. "What do you want from me?" she says softly.

"Time enough for that." There's only a thin layer of hospital garb between his hands and her new body, and he's testing that boundary now, teasing her, hoping beyond hope that she'll surrender to the call of his hearts to hers. "Tasha, Tasha," he murmurs.

"Promise me one thing." Tasha breathes out the words, light as air.

She has his interest. "And what is that?"

"Promise me that you won't kill him."

His head drops against her shoulder, and he makes a sound of clear frustration. " _Tasha_ ," he pronounces, "you're beyond all that. He saved River Song, _I_ saved you."

"And so I'm yours," she says, her whisper harsh. "Is that it?"

"The Doctor was everything to River Song," the Master murmurs back, wicked, awful. "Tasha Lem is born to greater things. I gave her the life of a Time Lady, and fate gave her a great and powerful duty." He bites gently into her shoulder, and she squirms. "One _she can't_ relinquish." He laughs, barely, the motion clear against her chest. "Or her timeline goes _poof_."

Fuck. He's right. She shuts her eyes and exhales, then opens them, her expression steely. "I know you don't want to kill him," she says. "This should be an easy promise to make."

"Oh, but accidents happen," he says, sardonic. "I'd hate to get on your bad side."

"Do what you please then," Tasha says, more than a blade's edge in her voice. "What am I to you but a toy?"

"My favorite toy," he breathes, and pins both her wrists under one hand to slap an isomorphic handcuff onto one wrist, catching her other as she goes to slap him on principle and neatly handcuffing her to the headboard. "Oh, isn't that beautiful," he notes, self-satisfied.

"Pertista," she returns, considering him. "One fuck in an alley and you've never been able to resist me since."

"That was never it, love," the Master says, a wry smile on his lips. "I just love a monster."

It seems Tasha isn't that different from River; the predicament here, the way this psychopath stares at her with pure fascination, already has her heart racing, her body wanting. "What now?" she says, sardonic herself.

"Right." He makes his way to the vanity, considers himself in the mirror, and opens one of the drawers to draw out a tool. He moves to her, then, his forehead to hers, his eyes slightly closed. "My Doctor," he murmurs, "gives me one kind of game to play. You give me wholly another. I never, ever want to lose you both." He presses a kiss to her mouth, deep, insinuating, and the device presses against her arm.

She screams against his mouth, maybe too weak from the treatment to maintain her usual pain tolerance, maybe weakness from her new body or out of pure surprise, and bites into his lip instinctively to make him draw away. He laughs, more than pleased, and kisses her again and again as the device carves into her skin with an agonizing slowness no matter how much she flinches against it.

"What," she gasps as the Master pulls back, just barely.

"You, my dear, are endless," he says, his eyes ablaze with pure interest. He yanks the device away from her arm, and snaps open the isomorphic handcuffs. She falls forward onto the bed, half-against him, then looks to her arm to see the damage done: the brand of an ouroboros on her upper wrist.

"This is a promise," the Master says, steady and unsteady at once, "and a warning."

She hates to say it; it might be the pain that allows her to. "I don't understand."

"I will come for you." His eyes search her face. "No matter the cost."

She's bound to fate, now. She's bound to him. It's just a matter of breaking the right rules at the right times, just as she always has, and, to be honest, he will _love_ it if she misbehaves. "Then come for me," she whispers.

He pins her down against him within an instant, his mouth firm on hers and his hands ripping off the thin robe she's wearing. He wastes no time with gentle foreplay, just his fingers pressing rough inside of her as she digs her fingernails hard into his clothes, frustrated at all the layers he wears now. He laughs into her skin as he buries his teeth into her neck and shoulder again and again, and thrusts his hardening cock against her thigh with each press of his fingers forward inside her.

"Yes," the Master breathes out as a sound escapes Tasha's throat and she shifts her hips against his fingertips. At the movement, he pulls his fingers out, brushes his thumb against her clit, and speaks softly.

"Your Doctor could never do this for you."

"I like some variety," she whispers back. "Are you going to fuck me or not?"

"Maybe I leave you here," he says, brushing his mouth against her neck as punctuation. "Maybe I tie you up and give you time to think about just what you want."

"Promises, promises," she says, blithe.

She can feel his smirk against the curve of her neck, and he spreads her thighs open, unzipping his dress trousers to waste no time pressing his cock inside of her.

There was no sex within the confines of the Library – a kiss or two – but Charlotte's world was beyond such physical, intimate, adult things, and she hasn't felt something so intense and crushing in what feels like decades. She feels herself quiver, and hates all the layers of clothes that keep him from any abuse she would like to wreak on him as he buries himself inside her with sharp intent.

His hand pins her wrists above her and she moves against it, against him, until he laughs and groans and thumbs her clit again and again. A moan breaks through her lips, and he kisses her in a victorious gesture. _I own this, I own this moment right now, and you will never forget it._ It's beyond her morality now, her ability to maintain herself, and she comes in an awful, wonderful rush with a groan against his mouth. He breaks the kiss and bites into her skin once, again, with each hard thrust, until he comes with shuddering gasps.

Tasha still quivers, coping, pulling herself together, and the Master speaks first.

"Anytime, love," he says. "Just call me."

"Only if I want the place burned to ashes," she murmurs, a clear smirk in her voice.

The Master starts to laugh, and his hand seeks up her thigh.

"Time enough to start a Church," he says. "Don't you think?"

It's not promising, to start an incarnation with such a mistake. But the mistake's been made. She might as well do it again. "I can get a start tomorrow."

His smile is broad, content. "Good girl."

* * *

The Master drops her one hundred years into the past with a vortex manipulator, a lovely wardrobe, and two thousand yuen.

It's more than enough.

The task is, actually, simple enough. Tasha could go into excruciating detail about the rise of the Church, the politicking, assassination, and the nice blend of the two, but the trouble is it was _so easy_ that the story really isn't that interesting to tell.

The story comes down to this: some people want salvation, at any cost, and all they need is the right person promising it in the right way to cement their loyalty.

She's been Mother Superious for forty relative years now, and it's grown dull. Even the assassination attempts are boring, and easily thwarted. Troops surround her as though she has any real fears, and she tolerates them all, even grows to love their presence, just a touch.

The only thing that interests her right now is Miss Kovarian, a full-faced and full-bodied woman who has clawed her way up from the fringes of the Church to the inner circle. She's also the woman who doomed Melody Pond to a guilt beyond comprehension.

It's Tasha's duty to ensure Melody Pond's suffering.

Kovarian joins her for drinks after a business dinner, the two already neatly drunk even upon the arrival in the Mother Superious's personal quarters, and Kovarian speaks freely, a gesture with her half-drunk glass. "I didn't take you for the, ah, drinking type, you know," she says.

"Mm, I aim to be full of surprises," Tasha says, breezy. "I brought you here for a reason, my dear."

Kovarian's eyes spark with interest. "What can I do for you?"

"I want you."

It startles Kovarian. Good. Tasha goes on. "To take on a mate, even for a short time, is a holy thing for me. I am bound body and soul to the Church, and I must entrust the care of my body to someone who will do well by it."

"Mother Superious," Kovarian says slowly, "I'm not sure I understand what you're saying."

"I only take the cleverest as mates," Tasha says, and her eyes spark with intention. "You should be flattered."

Kovarian doesn't break her gaze as she finishes her drink, then gently sinks to her knees before Tasha, her hands resting on her own knees. "Anything for my Mother Superious, of course."

Tasha lifts her chin. "Take off your clothes."

To manufacture a betrayal, you have to manufacture something to break. Kovarian binds herself body and soul to Tasha Lem; she fucks her nightly and daily and comes with a prayer of love on her lips. As the cracks in time begin to break across the universe she feels Kovarian break away from her piece by piece by piece until one day her body is hot against Tasha's but her heart is all but gone from fear.

Tasha says nothing, does nothing, and, because she does, the Church follows. The Church always follows.

When Kovarian leaves with her people, she does nothing besides voice one simple thing across all wavelengths of interest:

"Madame Kovarian is a heretic. Those who follow her will never find sanctuary or glory in the next world, and are not welcome in our Church."

It's rare that she has to travel back along her own timeline – a thing that's generally warned against, but it's not as though any incarnation she's had was very keen on rules – but sometimes warranted. The vortex manipulator lands her easily only a few years into the past, when things were much simpler and the troubles only just beginning; it's no trouble to send her past self to take a bath in a locked bathroom in order for the proper her to hear a conversation she missed the first time around.

"She's a _Time Lord_ ," Colonel Harston whispers, fear and paranoia vivid on his face as he speaks to Madame Parsta. "I know it sounds mad, but I've done my research. The mark on the woman, the one she hides, it belongs to the Corsair."

"You do sound mad," Parsta hisses back. "Time Lords? The Corsair? What are you thinking, questioning the Mother Superious?"

"I can show you everything." Harston's posture tightens. "Come with me."

Tasha idly draws her gun, steps into range, and kills them both with silent bolts before they even recognize that she's there. Harston dies instantly; Parsta gasps for air as blood fills her lungs, and Tasha walks past them, unconcerned, and hides her gun in the folds of her dress as she walks into the throne room.

The Doctor turns to face her, and beams, something horrible in his smile. "Ah, you must be Mother Superious!" he declares. "Hello, I'm the Doctor."

It shouldn't take her by surprise, but timelines are what they are, and they are never perfectly consistent. "That you are," she says, smooth, and moves into her throne. "I was rather expecting you to bring a friend."

"No friends today." This Doctor looks desperate, his dark and wild hair frantic as though he's run his fingers through it too many times in distress. She has some small idea of what's going on. "I have a favor to ask of the Papal Mainframe."

"Well, by all means." Tasha contemplates him.

The Doctor takes a moment to formulate the question. "'He will knock four times,'" he says. "Have you heard that phrase?"

She keeps her face impassive. "You come to me for advice on prophecies, Doctor?"

The Doctor's gaze hardens, just enough, behind the friendly facade. "So you have heard."

"A mere guess." Tasha gestures. "You fear death."

"Ah, well, Time Lords," he dismisses, mock-cheerful in spite of it. "Death is death, you know."

"You may be able to fool some with your antics, Doctor, but you can't fool me." She kicks a leg out casually. "I know you, though you don't know me."

He stares at her. "Pardon?" he comes out with.

She raises her eyebrows. "Death is death, you know," she echoes. "Some things, some people, are endless. Why are you so afraid?"

The Doctor looks at her for a long, calculated moment, an edge of anger in his eyes. "No one wants to die."

"No one has the right to live forever," Tasha says, and crosses one long leg over the other. "Maybe the same hearts, maybe the same soul, but not the same _person_."

"You have nothing to offer me," he retorts. "You just have – platitudes – "

"Did you expect me to save your life, Doctor?" she says. "Time enough for that, don't you think?"

He stops dead, then says, tone flat but questioning, "Spoilers."

Tasha just smiles, nearly too faint to recognize. "Go on," she says. "Earth is waiting for your help."

The Doctor's smile is just as wry and small. "Isn't it always?"

"I'll be seeing you," Tasha says, airy, and tilts her chin up. "You're dismissed, Doctor."

He sweeps a bow and turns away, uncertainty set in his shoulders. Once he's gone, she rises from the throne and activates the vortex manipulator to return to her own time.

Now she knows why Harston and Parsta are dead, of course, but there are greater questions, and a greater calling.

Luckily, she gets to research. Even a new body can't keep an archaeologist from their love of books.


	4. Chapter 4

In the end, while investigating the Dalek incursion and who exactly holds Dalek puppet biological machinery, the Church finds out what she is, if not who exactly. Tasha can only imagine what the Council of Elders would say if they knew the specifics: that Kovarian's pet psychopath had established their doctrine one hundred years ago. They're _terribly_ upset anyway. It's precious.

"So," Tasha says, eminently casual as she lounges on her throne, the Elders before her flanked with troops. "What now?"

"It was enough that you are a Dalek puppet," Elder Nahzat says flatly. "You must step down. We cannot have Time Lords meddling in our affairs."

"A Time Lady," she corrects idly, " _created_ your affairs. You ought to be grateful."

"It is _wrong_ for your species to meddle with the fate of humanity," Elder Pein snaps. "Your plainly _atheistic_ society – "

"Do I strike you as an atheist, Pein?" Tasha cuts him off with, smooth.

"We cannot have a Time Lord at the head of our Church." Nahzat is angrier than she's ever seen him. "Step down, or we will remove you ourselves."

"Some advice from someone who's seen far more than you have." She uncrosses her legs and rises from the throne. "If you mean to kill someone, just _do it_."

The Elders move back a step as she moves forward, consciously or not, and Pein speaks before Nahzat can get the words out: "Kill her. Now."

A smile crosses Tasha's face in the instant before the laser rifle shots strike her, four admittedly well-aimed wounds sending her to her knees, then she laughs, soft and low, as her hands begin to glow.

All movement in the room has stopped, now, and she remains on her knees, smiling through the pain as she contemplates the golden glow emanating from her palms. "What's happening?" Nahzat demands.

"The end of Tasha Lem," Tasha says, and decides those are good enough last words. She forces regeneration energy in a blast through the room to send them all flying, wounded, and she mends, grows, feels herself come apart and together as the energy rebuilds her into something fresh and new.

She glances down with a faint frown. The lovely Mother Superious clothes don't quite fit now that she's a man. Shame.

He pushes himself to his feet, feeling that lovely faint glow of regeneration energy coursing through his every cell, and saunters off to seize Tasha's vortex manipulator. It takes only thirty seconds' work to send him back to the very instant he needs to go.

By now, he's very good at vortex manipulators.

There _is_ and has been a plan for some time. It didn't come to him on cardstock in blue envelopes from any Time Lord, but from the diligent research of a once-archaeologist in search of her past and future destiny.

It goes like this:

 _One._ Arrive on Gallifrey over one thousand relative years in the past.

He rolls his eyes as he jerks backward in space and time and appears in the Prydonian quarters. Linear time is going to be such a bore, but one does what one must.

 _Two._ Clothes. This hadn't been a priority in his original plan, but Tasha Lem's dress is _pinching_ in unpleasant places.

Easy enough to find a wardrobe and change into something flattering. The dark tones and sharp collar look nice and flashy against his dirty blond hair, and the shoes fit quite nicely.

 _Three._ Break into the Matrix.

The beauty of Gallifrey-bound Time Lords, especially ones who predate the antics of the Doctor or the Master, is that they're mostly absolutely rubbish at both detecting and managing threats that would actively enter their domain. He evades most and knocks out who he can't, until he's in front of where one-half of the Time Lord consciousness is stored.

A smile comes easier to this face. He jams the drive into the console, and the virus takes hold, implanting the memories into each and every living Time Lord right where he needs them.

The Corsair tosses his head, withdraws the device to snap it in half, and tosses it into the rubbish as he goes.

He moves silently across gorgeous marble floors as he rushes back to Prydonian; he twists his face into distress as he finally finds who he's looking for, and catches him by the shoulder to make him turn.

"Sir," he says urgently, "someone stole my things!"

The Master looks startled, a strange expression on this serious-looking incarnation. "What things?"

"All of them," the Corsair says, with a touch of impatience. "I need your help."

"You could ask the Guard – "

"I'm asking you." His expression softens, playing on his apparent youth. "Please."

The Master frowns. "As you will," he says, "but I have places to be."

He restrains a smirk. "Another date?"

"They are not dates, stop it," he requests with a weary gesture, before the words even fully leave his mouth, and contemplates him. "You'll owe me a favor, you know."

"I can do favors," the Corsair teases, low and slow, and brushes a hand down his arm to catch him by the elbow.

"You're incorrigible." He lifts his chin, hiding vague amusement. "Come along."

They walk in brief and brisk silence, then the Corsair adds, sly, "I'll tell him you were nice."

"I said stop," the Master complains, and the Corsair laughs, broad, more than ready for this challenge. 

He's not the only one who can play the game of faces.

* * *

In all of Missy's lives, she's seen beautiful things: blood, destruction, entropy enveloping life, the failure of hope. Nothing in that thousand years could dare compare with the sight before her now, one that strikes a chord of pleasure in her every time she sees it: the Doctor, bound, weakened, helpless.

"You really are a lovely little thing now," Missy declares, casual, fascinated, dismissive all at once. "I wonder what you'll regenerate to after I kill you this time? And the time after that? Maybe I'll keep going until I find one I like the best."

"Missy," the Doctor says, her voice forced steady. "You don't have to do this. I know that you can come back to where you once were. After the Vault, after everything. I believe in you."

"You always have." Missy leans on her umbrella and smiles for a flash. "Your hope is the most darling thing, isn't it, the _naivete_ of it all."

"I know I saw you change." The Doctor's hope bores through Missy, intent, caring, still. "I know I saw you become a better person."

"People _change_ , Doctor!" She tosses her umbrella into a nearby chair and draws a knife. The Doctor watches Missy, her expression unchanging even as Missy straddles her and presses her down into the marble floor of the ornate house. "People change," she murmurs. "I changed for you, but now I'm _back_ , baby."

"Are you now," the Doctor says softly.

Missy twirls the knife in her hand, then places it against the Doctor's neck.

The Doctor's eyebrows lift. "If you're going to do it, do it."

It's more of a challenge than she would've expected from this regeneration. Missy considers the knife, something beautiful and horrible swirling in her mind and hate like a tune in her head, then she meets the Doctor's gaze.

It strikes her, in pieces. First, she pictures the knife's bite into the Doctor's throat, the blood coursing over the marble, and the knife clatters to the floor in her sickening burst of conscience. Then she sees the understanding in the Doctor's eyes. The love. She presses her eyes shut and tries to orient herself, to remind herself who she is and what she is doing, but she knows it is all infinitely more complicated than the simplest thing her life's been to that point. _I am the Master, and you will obey me._

Her eyes snap open, but her vision's dark.

"I suppose," a man's soft voice says in her mind, "that we must take further measures."

* * *

_Wake._

Missy blinks, and her TARDIS tilts; she grabs onto the console instinctively and looks across the way to the young woman clinging to the console. Blind confusion wins out for a brief moment, then she relaxes as it settles. "Jara," she says, with an arch sort of pleased tone, "you act like you've never been in a TARDIS before."

"I haven't," Jara admits, and cringes. "You know, most of us haven't!"

" _Prydonian_." Missy dismisses them with a gesture. "They never teach you the important things."

"I'll catch on, ma'am," Jara assures her. "How long is it until we get there?"

"Mm, well, complicated," Missy says idly. "You see, he's midflight, and I'm not _quite_ certain where he's going."

"But he'll find the Doctor, we're sure about that?" Jara grabs the console as the TARDIS shakes again, then scoffs. "It's going to be that low-rent planet she's so fond of, isn't it?"

" _Earth_." Missy has been defeated many times on its soil, but nothing rankles the way losing complete control over Earth due to a psychic link and _positive thinking_ did. It's so _mortifying_. "Yes, the Doctor does so love that backwater planet."

Jara shakes her head. "The Doctor's devotion to the survival of such a silly, backward place is so… so…"

" _Sentimental_ ," Missy pronounces, each syllable drenched in distaste. "Yes. That's what she does, my dear. Hope and dreams and love."

There's a pause, and Missy glances askance at the young Time Lady. "What," she says, with little inflection.

"Demon's Run." Jara looks away. "Armies fled his vengeance."

"Oh, that." Missy sighs. "Let me manage _that_."

"That's why we asked you to join the cause," Jara supposes. "Because this Doctor must be stopped."

"Yes." It won't be simple, but, oh, it could be a terrible amount of fun, win or lose. "It would be my great pleasure to – "

 _Oh_. Pain stabs through the side of her head like a knife into her temple, and twists. She faintly realizes she's gripping the console, white-knuckled, and pulls herself to her feet from her knees. It feels as though something vital is being pulled awfully from the center of her being, and she manages not to retch, until it finally subsides.

"Kill the Doctor," Missy forces out, to Jara, who hovers beside her now. "I must. I will."

"Of course, ma'am." Jara's smile is incandescent. "The Doctor will die, and the cause will be realized."

A smirk flashes across Missy's face, though she feels nothing at all, not even the beautiful hate that's fueled her each day for over a millennium.

_You must. You will._

* * *

The wrapping paper gives way after a rip or two, and the Doctor pulls off the top of the box without a moment's hesitation, clapping with glee upon seeing what's inside the present. "Oh, lovely," she declares, and pulls the long scarf out of the package. "Look at that! It's _huge_!"

"I know you've got that whole wardrobe in the TARDIS," Graham says, understating as he nods to the faint glow of the TARDIS in the next room, "but you're low on scarves."

"Ah, you know," the Doctor says easily, "sometimes you unravel them on bad days, sometimes you give them away, then suddenly you've got to wear big furry collars because your neck is cold. My hair hasn't always been this long, you know, your neck does get cold!"

"'Cos you were a man before," Ryan speaks up, and her gaze flicks over to him, vaguely bemused. "What? Are you ever going to tell us about that?"

"It's fine," Yaz says instantly. "That sort of thing happens, we're not, you know, _backwards_ just 'cos we're from twenty-first century Earth."

"It's not what you think," the Doctor says, wearily amused.

"Something alien, is it?" Graham prompts her.

The Doctor chooses to pile the scarf around her neck a few times and gesture broadly with a smile. "So cozy! Go on, Yaz, you pick one."

"It is your turn," Ryan supposes, a bit slowly.

"Right," Yaz says with a light sigh, and goes to snatch up a present from under Graham's mid-sized tree.

There's a sound from outside. It's not much of a sound as far as sounds go, but it's a sound that makes the Doctor's back rise, and she's on her feet before she can stop herself. "'Scuse me," she says, and moves quickly to the doorway.

They're behind her, and she whirls on them to stop them before she can open the door. "I'm serious," she suggests. "It'll just be a mo."

"Something's going on," Ryan points out. "We're not stupid."

"I never called you stupid," the Doctor returns, with a quick jab of the finger. "I just think it's best I take a look at this alone."

"A look at _what_?" Yaz presses.

The Doctor pulls in a breath, turns around, and opens the door to reveal a large eighteenth century pirate ship parked across Graham's walk and lawn.

"That's," Ryan blurts out.

"That's a pirate ship," Yaz says, more slowly but with just as much incredulity.

"On my _lawn_!" Graham exclaims, jabbing a finger of his own at the thing. "What's a pirate ship doing on my lawn?"

The Doctor can't help but smile. "It's a TARDIS," she says. "Not sure how, but universe is funny that way, isn't it?"

"Wait, wait, wait," Ryan starts, gesturing abruptly.

"Who is it?" Yaz interrupts.

"I'll have to find out but I've got a pretty good idea," the Doctor concedes. "Go back in, please, I sort of have to work this out before we decide if this is a friendly incursion onto Graham's lawn or not."

There's a sick sort of silence, then Graham says what at least the humans seem to be thinking. "You're not thinking it's – "

"No, no, no," the Doctor says hurriedly. "Not his style."

"We should go," Yaz decides swiftly, and gently pulls Ryan in by the wrist.

"Come on then," Ryan decides for Graham as well, a light pull on his wrist as well.

"Fine," Graham declares in surrender as he's pulled along. "Take care, Doc."

"Will do," the Doctor calls after them as the door shuts, and she faces the TARDIS in front of her with a quick exhalation. "Right then," she says, decisive, and strides forward.

A door splits the side of the ship open and a man the Doctor doesn't recognize stumbles out, and hits the ground. She runs forward on instinct and helps him to his feet. "Is it you?" she asks, soft, as he tries to gain his footing.

In silent answer, he yanks up the sleeve of his shirt to bare his thick wrist, which is marked with an ouroboros. The Doctor breathes a sigh of relief, confused but at least reassured. "Right then," she says, soothing, "tell me what's gone wrong."

"Take me prisoner." His voice and eyes are full of wholehearted conviction in the words. "I need to be contained in your TARDIS, or I don't know what I'll do."

All her relief vanishes like flash steam. "Fine," she says, brightly panicked, and hauls him into the house. "All fine!" she declares, and pulls them both abruptly into the TARDIS before the three humans can get more than a glimpse of the Corsair. The med bay is too far in for the Doctor to not get a little exhausted hauling the bulk of the Corsair along, but she gets there, dropping him gently against the cot.

He stirs, pushing himself up, and insists, "Be careful. It's much worse – "

"I'll be the judge of that, thank you," the Doctor says briskly, and snaps simple medical restraints onto him before beginning to scan him over with the sonic. Her heart sinks as the results start to come in; his pain receptors are clearly, acutely running overtime, his systems all haywire, but it's not letting her easily determine the root cause. "Oh," she murmurs, "oh, this is – "

"Not good," the Corsair says, flat and ground out from pain. "Thank you."

"I haven't done anything yet, save your thanks," she says, and scans him over again with a new setting, gaze tight on her screwdriver. Nothing, or near nothing, yet. "Tell me what happened," she tries, and moves to his side for some small comfort.

As she approaches, the Corsair jerks up against the restraints, a plain attempt to fly in her direction, a wildness in his eyes; he yanks himself back with tremor after tremor. "Something terrible is going to happen," he says, in a firm whisper.

Yeah, the Doctor was pretty sure that was where this was headed. "Is he coming?" she asks, keeping her voice level and to the point.

"I don't know," the Corsair says, in barely restrained frustration. "I just know – " He flinches against the restraints, and the Doctor forces herself to remain still.

"I need better restraints," the Doctor says, brightly concerned, and rummages through the med bay's inventory until she finds something she can trust to hold a Time Lord of the Corsair's size. The good news is the homicidal urge is low enough at this point that the Corsair looks relieved as she claps them on him instead of coming at her even harder. Then, he says as he meets her eyes, "Go."

"Right!" The Doctor clasps her hands together, and goes at a run to finally greet Graham, Ryan, and Yaz, who are hovering near the TARDIS in clear concern. "Hi," she decides on, breathless from the run.

"Who is that?" Graham asks instantly.

"Are you going to tell us?" Yaz looks fairly convinced she's going to get a no even as she asks.

"Please." Ryan's staring steadily at the Doctor now. "This doesn't look good."

"This is… above a human paygrade," the Doctor says, slowly. "I have to handle this myself. I'm sorry."

"You're not going this alone," Ryan says, firm. "It's our job to help you, no matter what."

Yaz shakes her head. "It's that bad?" She holds the Doctor's gaze. "Bring me."

"I don't – " The Doctor looks away, inwardly haranguing herself, but she can't get into this, not now. She doesn't even know where to start, bringing up Time Lords, Gallifrey, the lot of it. "Look, this isn't against any of you at all. I just don't trust these people for a minute. Sit this one out, enjoy Christmas! Have a popper on me."

There's silence for a moment, then Graham releases a low whistle and gestures. "Do what you need to do, Doc."

The front door opens behind the Doctor, and she whirls around, quickly turning to gesture the humans into the kitchen, before moving to face whatever has politely come through the door.

Where she stands in an easy pose, Missy looks terrible and beautiful, and not the usual kind of terrible, her face gaunt with pain. There's some awful mix of terror and relief in the Doctor's chest within the instant of recognition, then a knife flashes in Missy's hand and a smirk across her face in near the same motion, and the Doctor blasts the knife with the sonic. Missy snatches the knife out of the air after it falls with a _zing_ , and comes at her. 

The Doctor scrambles out of the way. "Missy," she presses. "Missy, please, stop, talk to me."

"Maybe once you're dying," Missy muses, and slashes at the Doctor's arm, cutting through her sleeve. "Love a good last words."

"Let's take this outside," the Doctor says quickly, "even if it's a bit brisk. I so rarely die in the snow, you know."

"You can't fool me, protecting your pets," Missy drawls, voice ragged from clear exhaustion, and seizes the Doctor; the knife is at her throat, cuts slightly into her skin, and the Doctor opens her mouth to speak, but Missy cuts her off. "Ah, ah, ah," she says. "I'm not interested in _words_ , Doct – "

The knife bites into the Doctor's throat, slices just half an inch into her skin, then clatters to the ground, as Missy sinks down to collapse into a desperate, panting heap.

There's no time to waste. She rushes Missy into the TARDIS at breakneck speed, her hearts racing in the heaviest panic she can imagine as blood drips down her neck and stains her lovely new scarf.

* * *

The Corsair jerks awake in hideous pain with the restraints biting into his wrists. The next thing he registers is a low and satisfied laughter, and his gaze shoots up to meet Missy's clouded one. "It's you, isn't it," he says, keeping his voice even.

"Oh, it's you! What a _party_." She smirks. "Of course, we must keep the Doctor out of the loop about all of this. Such a tragedy when a good surprise party is ruined, don't you think?"

"She'll be back any moment." He's overwhelmed between the desire to throttle the life from Missy and the awful urge to snap the Doctor's neck. "I'll tell her everything I know."

"And what do you _know_?" Missy asks, laugh clear in her tone though she restrains it. "I don't know that you're terribly connected, you see. You never were. I blame your gimmick. Hackneyed, if you ask me."

"I never wanted to be one of you." The Corsair knows he shouldn't have taken the bait, though, the moment the words leave his mouth. "I wanted to be myself."

"That's not how I recall it." Missy puts on an exaggerated frown. "Little Corsair would do anything for his betters."

"You were the future," he argues. "Who wouldn't want to be a part of that?"

"All _you_ wanted to do was get drunk and shag your way across planets," she says, her distaste clear. "Some of us have real ambitions, and you were never bound to that."

"I steal things too," the Corsair says blandly.

"Help me." Missy's not joking anymore. "Help me and we can both go home."

He's just as serious, a rare thing. "I don't have a home."

"Don't be obtuse." She rolls her eyes. "We have the same goal, don't we?"

"Neither of us is going to kill the Doctor," he says pointedly.

She laughs, plainly unamused. "Not with that attitude we're not!"

"I'm not interested in this game or whoever is playing it," he clarifies, terse. "The Doctor dies when the Doctor dies. It's not as though she's ever been particularly careful."

"You're such a waste," Missy says, dismissive. "If you get in my way, I won't spare you."

"Oh, as though _the Master_ has ever shown restraint." The Corsair sends her an unimpressed look. "Talk about hackneyed."

She yanks against her restraints, now pointed herself. "More of that and I'll make it slow."

He rolls his eyes at her in return. "Promises, promises."

The Doctor slips into the med bay and looks between the two, not visibly flinching when they yank forward against their restraints at the sight of her. "Sorry," the Corsair says immediately.

"Take these off and face me, you coward," Missy says flatly, the next instant.

"Something is terribly wrong," the Doctor says, not explicitly addressing that idea. "With both of you. I've never seen anything like this in a Time Lord, never even heard of it."

"I need to tell you something," the Corsair cuts in abruptly. "They brought me back, sent me off on a TARDIS, and they put something in my head, that I needed to find you, that you needed to die. I don't remember who, but whoever it was had – "

"Oh, shut _up_ ," Missy says, rolling her own eyes and dropping her head back.

"Rude," the Corsair retorts.

"Go on," the Doctor urges the Corsair, clearly forcing herself to look at him and not Missy.

"I was dead," the Corsair says, blunt. "The only way to bring me back was to generate me from the Matrix."

"I was afraid of that," the Doctor says, grim. "And – I knew, Corsair, I – I saw. You weren't the only Time Lord dragged into that trap."

The Corsair shakes his head to shake off the memory of House, of his worst death by far. "I'm here now. And whoever generated me from the Matrix wants you dead."

"Oh, how they fall over themselves to save you, Doctor," Missy says, distasteful again. "You and all the weaklings you collect as pets along your way."

"I'm not a pet," the Corsair says, mildly annoyed.

"Enough," the Doctor cuts in, and starts ticking points off on her hands. "All right. Figure out who wants to kill me, save you both, see if anyone else has been hurt. Next stop, Gallifrey, I s'pose." Her cheer fades just slightly, and she exhales. "Whew. Gallifrey. Time Lords who want me dead. Excellent! Something a bit new for once, at least."

Missy starts to laugh, broadly, and the Corsair releases a heavy sigh, speaking up. "Can you sedate her or something? Or me? Whatever it takes so I don't have to hear that."

The Doctor moves to him, and strokes dark sweaty hair from his forehead, unmoving as he flinches towards her. "You look like you're hurting," she says, gentle. "I can put you under."

"It might be safer for you." Difficult conundrum. "But I won't be able to save you from her."

"Ah, I manage," the Doctor says, flippant. "That's sort of what I do, isn't it?"

"Just take the edge off," he says after the slightest pause, hating to admit defeat against the pain. The tension in his shoulders begins to lessen as she withdraws to prepare the dose. The needle slips below his skin, and he drifts, left with nausea and little else.

* * *

The Doctor drops a light kiss to the Corsair's head as he falls into a drugged sleep, and looks across the med bay at Missy as she prepares a second dose. Missy's eyes are clouded with vague confusion and open amusement.

"We need to talk," the Doctor says, tone not heavy but certainly not light either.

"Not what I was thinking," Missy says, brisk. "Now that we have your little fan out of the way, why don't we sort this the classic way? You and me, for the fate of the universe?"

"This isn't you." The Doctor takes measured steps towards her, until she's mere feet away. "Someone's using you. _You_ ," she points out. "That doesn't make you angry?"

"Oh, silly, silly Doctor," Missy says, with an exaggerated pout. "You think I'm not doing this of my own free will? You think _I_ have no reason to kill _you_?"

"Honestly, yeah, that's what I'm thinking," the Doctor says, with an idle gesture. "You were all sorted – you were finally _you_ again," she tries to explain, floundering. "Like our time on Gallifrey. Not the bloodthirsty mess I've been fighting for over a thousand years now."

"Did you just call me a mess?" Missy asks, looking scandalized.

"You were always a sharp edge," the Doctor says, staying firm. "You just lost sight of how to use that to heal instead of hurt, and now you're just a knife in someone else's hand, no will of your own."

"What will it take to convince you that I chose to come for you myself?" Missy snaps off, shakes, and retches, expression vividly clearly hating to be seen this way.

The Doctor could be sick at the clear display of the agony Missy is in. "Tell me why."

"Because you are, and always have been, in the way," Missy bites out. "Every time."

"Not enough," the Doctor says, brisk. "Gonna need more than that."

"You're so _tiresome_ ," Missy complains.

"I'm tiresome? You're the one back to 'I'm the Master and you will obey me'," the Doctor says, apparently genuinely amused. "Doesn't murder ever bore you?"

"Only the boring ones," Missy says, as smoothly as she can through her ailment, "but I do so _love_ how you go down fighting."

"You too." The Doctor can't help but offer a small smile. "Do you remember the Vault, Missy?" Missy scoffs, but the Doctor presses. "Do you, have they taken that from you?" 

" _I_ remember a moment of weakness," Missy says, each syllable pointed.

"A moment," the Doctor argues, "when we were finally together." She lets a beat pass between them. "Did you hate that so much?"

Something in Missy's eyes changes, a shade troubled, for just an instant. "I have my reasons for doing what I do," she says, "and it's not _my_ fault you're too unsophisticated to understand."

"I've always understood." She moves right next to Missy now, ignoring the desperate urge to kill that presses Missy against the medical restraints, and gently touches her friend's previously perfectly coiffed hair. "I've just never understood why it mattered so much to you."

"Because I am who I am, Doctor, and you are who you are." Missy's gaze is dead again. "Once I kill you, things will never be the same."

This isn't a Vault, not by a long shot, but it could be a second chance, if she manages to save them both from whatever is trying to kill them while simultaneously keeping _them_ from killing _her_. What a day. The Doctor pulls up a chair, and at last she responds. "Thing is? I know you have it in you. Can't fool me."

Missy scoffs. "Inject me with your swill," she says. "It must be better than listening to this."

The Doctor looks at Missy, and exhales, then injects her with the cocktail. "I'm here," she says, soft, as she settles against Missy's shoulder. "Got you."

* * *

When they land, the Doctor exhales and pieces together what she can of a plan. Gallifrey has never been particularly friendly to her, and someone out there in the wreckage of the Citadel is actively out to kill her. The problem is there's little she can do in the comfort of the TARDIS med bay to ease or end the suffering of two of her friends.

Gallifrey may have more means to help than she has on hand, considering that all her Time Lord-centric medical technology broke years ago, and she's obviously not had much by way of chances to replace it. Even the scans she's capable of doing, the ones that should be offering _something_ , are spitting out nothing useful beyond the obvious: whatever they've been infected with is trying to shut down all of their bodily systems as slowly and painfully as possible.

"We're here," the Corsair says from across the med bay. The Doctor looks up. "Aren't we?"

"Ah, well," the Doctor starts, "yes, but let's not be hasty."

"No plan then?" She doesn't have to look up to see the strained but wry smile on his face, clear in his tone.

She pulls a face. "Either I go in earnest, I go in sneaky, or I go in and surrender to learn more. Tough one."

"I can get you in," the Corsair says simply.

"They think you're on their side." So they both seem to be supposing, anyway. "Can you manage it? The thing?" She gestures at her head, but she suspects he understands her meaning, anyway.

"Oh, I always have," he says, easy. "Well, mostly, anyway."

It's a risky move, to put herself in the hands of someone who could snap and, well, snap her neck at any time. Still, this feels like a trap, with two friends as easy bait, and the best way to see who's trying to trap you is to watch it snap shut from a distance and see who shows up to check it.

Back to it, then. "They'll try to take her from me." Missy is anyone's most prized chess piece, as long as they can hold her.

"You think they can get into your TARDIS?" the Corsair asks, at least putting on a mildly curious tone for such a big question.

"They're Time Lords." She's already taken every precaution, though. Her head aches. "It doesn't matter if I heal you, if I don't figure out who's doing this. They'll just do it over again."

"Doctor." The Corsair sounds serious, and she looks up at him to see steel in his gaze. "Do the right thing. It's what you do."

There's silence, then she nods, and stands. "Either way," she says, "I want you along."

Missy starts to laugh from her spot beside the Doctor, and the Doctor looks down at her, chest now aching as well. "I'll come back for you," she promises Missy.

"You're _ridiculous_ ," Missy says, still clearly loopy from the dosage.

The Doctor exhales, and goes to release the Corsair, who is steadying his own breaths as he rubs his wrists. "Ready?" she asks, more brightly than she feels.

"I'll have to be," he answers, with a small, vaguely unhappy smile.

The Doctor has never particularly feared the Corsair, but right now he's imposing and fighting back homicidal urges against her, and that's worrying as they walk to the TARDIS exit. "Okay!" she declares. "Let's give this one a try."

"Chin up, love," the Corsair says, mild and pleasant, and she musters a smile before opening the door. A laser blast hits the TARDIS shields, and she throws her hands up. "Woah, woah, woah!" she exclaims.

The Corsair is on her all at once, huge arm wrapped around her throat, and she hopes beyond hope that this is _all part of the plan_ , just as he speaks. "I've got her. Should I do it now?"

The ragged-looking Time Lords in front of them lower their weapons and stare in silence before a young woman moves forward. "Not you," she declares. "Give her to us."

"Why?" the Doctor gets out past the Corsair's grip. "What do you want from me?"

"Everything," the young woman pronounces. "Corsair." She speaks an abrupt, rattled-off phrase in High Gallifreyan that the Doctor doesn't catch, and the Corsair shoves the Doctor onto the ground, hard; he makes a horrified sound, and immediately rushes forward, only then struck hard in the shoulder and side with laser rifle fire.

The Doctor yanks out her sonic and bolts the TARDIS door shut, but the young Time Lady sharply kicks it from her hand and says, pleasantly enough, to her people: "She's in there. Bring her."

"Won't be so easy," the Doctor says, half-taunting, then sobers. "Who are you?" She keeps her eyes as close on the woman above her as she can manage from her position.

"My name is Jara," she says, flatly, "and I'm nothing." She shakes her head. "Take her. Now."

"Got you," the Doctor calls to the Corsair as quickly and with as much strength as she can muster, but the Corsair is on the ground twisting in pain before she finally loses sight of him as she's dragged into the ruins of the nearest building.

* * *

Missy recognizes Jara through the bleary feeling from the injection, and laughs in vague relief. Then a needle jabs into her neck and she hisses in disapproval and pain. "Enough," she snipes, as everything begins to come back into focus. Ah, good.

"It's time." Jara is cupping her face, now, expression fond. "You know what you need to do."

Oh, she does. It's what she's always dreamed of. Missy nods, and straightens, hoping she doesn't appear as much of a mess as she feels. It would be a pity for a new Doctor's first sight to be an imperfect picture of her first and only love.

As they enter the painfully white room, the Doctor is bound and half-awake on a beautiful Gaileanan marble table. It strikes her as a holy altar as she approaches; the silent young Time Lord moving behind her who she's disregarded in the beauty of the moment moves a tray of implements to her side and moves with graceful speed from the room.

The door locks behind him. Good. Missy looks down at the Doctor, pleasant as she comes to and squirms against her restraints. "As usual," she says to the Doctor, wryly casual, "the tables turn, don't they?"

"Missy." The Doctor's gaze is close and worried on her face, to the exclusion of any danger to herself. "The way you feel right now, physically, the way you feel about me, it's all tied together. Someone is trying to hurt you to get you to do something horrible to me, they're controlling you, you need to fight it."

"Have I ever needed an excuse to kill you?" Missy moves easily to the tray and considers what they've given her. "Have I _ever_ needed a reason to hurt you, Doctor?"

"This is different and you know it," the Doctor insists. "This isn't you."

"What exactly about 'kill the Doctor' isn't me?" Missy can't hold back her amusement.

The Doctor is just buying time. Missy knows that. Still, it's always interesting to see her fight back. "What happens to you if you don't?" the Doctor presses.

Missy's hand clenches onto the nearest device, an involuntary movement. "What sort of question is _that_?"

"One I'm not sure they're going to let you answer," the Doctor says swiftly.

"There's no _they_ ," Missy says, pointedly. "It's me. It's always been me."

The Doctor isn't about to give this up, is she? "They generated you from the – "

Enough. She jabs the device into the Doctor's temple and slams the button, and the Doctor starts to grind out a half-scream through her sharply tensed mouth. "Scream," Missy whispers.

She isn't sure what would be more satisfying, a scream or an endless loop of the Doctor just squirming and biting through her cheek in an effort not to. She twists the device and a guttural cry escapes the Doctor's mouth, and she shudders, instinctively jerking against the restraints.

"Missy," the Doctor manages, frantic and labored.

"Oh, you think you can talk your way out of anything," Missy snipes. "The Doctor and her precious mouth." The Doctor twitches desperately, head pressed back against the marble as she flinches harshly against the pain pulses being shot through her body. Just as the beauty of the moment starts to really hit Missy, her abdomen wrenches and she sinks down, winded, breaking the contact of the device to the Doctor's temple.

The Doctor is pulling in harsh, choked breaths as Missy tries to even out her own, her hearts racing as her fingers tense into painfully gripped fists.

She's killed the Doctor before. She's seen the perfect image of the Doctor dying at her hands in the most intense dreams she's ever had. This is a distraction. This is nothing.

"Next!" Missy declares, and it's more strained than she likes. The Doctor is stammering beside her, but she ignores it. "The plan is to kill you as many times as we need to," she goes on, ignoring keenly how her voice shakes, "but they do seem to understand that there's really no purpose in making you go quickly."

"If you're going to do it," the Doctor says, apparently steady again, "then do it."

"Oh, reverse psychology," Missy dismisses. "A game for humans, isn't it? Let's be _Time Lords_ , shall we? I was thinking of torturing you into submission and then killing you until we find a regeneration who isn't insufferable."

"The royal we," the Doctor notes. "That's new. Unless you've got someone you answer to?"

"Do let me go on and tell you everything, you're completely right," Missy can't resist mocking. "Suffice to say I have friends. Don't I always?"

The Doctor is staring at her intently. "You know you can't break me," she says. "Do what you want, Missy, I obviously can't stop you right now. But all this torture stuff is just to get you off, isn't it?"

"You don't think I'll do it." Missy's tone gains an edge, and she snatches up a knife from the tray.

"I trust you," the Doctor says, firm. "I trust that I know you, and that you know me."

Missy laughs, and the movement in her ribs triggers all the pain all over again in thin rivulets all throughout her body. She ignores it. "How are you still so naive?"

"Because I _saw you_ do good," the Doctor says, gaze not on the knife but on Missy's face. "And I want to know what happens if you choose not to kill me."

She rolls her eyes. "Why would I ever choose _not_ to kill you."

"I don't know, you refrain from it all the time," the Doctor supposes. "You've only ever properly killed me once."

"That was nice," Missy says, reminiscing. "I did like that."

"Out of all the times you've faced me, you've pulled the metaphorical trigger _once_ ," the Doctor goes on, easy but level. "What changed? What's so important right now, that you need to drag me into a trap to kill me right here, right now, on Gallifrey?"

Missy climbs onto the marble surface, and presses the flat of the blade to the Doctor's face. "That would be telling," she whispers.

"If you don't think I'm going to survive, what's the point in _not_ telling me the plan?" the Doctor murmurs back, unmoved.

Missy loves the feel of the Doctor's breath warm on her cheek. "Because you have a habit of getting out of handcuffs."

"Tell you what," the Doctor says, soft. "If you let me out, I'll help you figure out what's going on."

"What do you _mean_ what's going on," Missy retorts, nettled.

The Doctor's eyes search her face for something. "You're dying, Missy."

Missy laughs, sardonic. "You wish," she says, and seizes the Doctor by the chin to press her head back against the marble again. "I'm not the one who's going to die today, Doctor."

"I scanned you," the Doctor whispers, as Missy moves the blade of the knife lightly down her neck. "I saw what's happening to you. At least, the results. You need my help."

"I have never needed your help," Missy snaps back, and slices the blade in a swift motion against her shoulderblade to draw blood. The Doctor barely reacts, still watching her. "Stop looking at me like that," she demands.

"You're starting to see it, aren't you?" the Doctor says, with the faintest smile, half a grimace. "All falling into place. You're too smart to be someone else's chess piece, at least for long."

"Stop it," Missy retorts, and cuts open the Doctor's shirt a few inches to cut hard and deep into the skin she can reveal, over and over again.

"Are you telling me," the Doctor goes on, breaths coming sharper but tone still the same, "you've _accepted_ someone else bringing you back from the dead for their own purposes, and you plan to do exactly as they say?"

" _Doctor_ ," Missy snaps off, and presses the bloody blade against her cheek. The Doctor looks unintimidated. "What is _wrong_ with you?" she demands.

The Doctor smiles a little. "I'm just waiting."

" _No one_ is coming for you," Missy pronounces. "They'll have killed the Corsair by now."

"I think he's harder to kill than you think," the Doctor says, and clarifies on: "Also, that's not what I meant."

Missy's grip is so tight on the knife now, she doesn't think she could pry it out of her own hand if she tried. The pain's ratcheted up to agony now, and she refuses to let it cross her face. "You shouldn't trust me," she retorts. "I'm going to kill you."

"I'm waiting," the Doctor says, and a vague smile tugs at her mouth. "Go on."

A horrible, sharp sound bursts from Missy's mouth before she can stop it, and she sinks down against the Doctor, trying to catch her breath. "Shh," the Doctor soothes. "Take your time."

"Stop," Missy commands, voice harsh as she gasps.

The Doctor's voice is soft against her ear, breath warm in her hair. "I'm here for you. I always have been, you know that."

" _Doctor._ " It comes out as a ground-out curse word, and she slams the knife down on its side next to the Doctor's head.

She can feel the Doctor smiling, concerned, beneath her. "Stop," she blurts out in exasperation, and something presses her forward to seize the Doctor's chin and kiss her hard, more of a punishment than a gift. She feels the Doctor's breaths quicken, her chest rising fast against Missy's, and Missy kisses her a few more times, all punitive, her fingers holding fast on the Doctor's throat.

Missy yanks back, dizzy, repulsed and confused at her own actions. "Should I do it now?" she whispers.

"Do what you have to." The Doctor barely pauses, before going on, cheerfully calculated, "you do _have_ to, right?"

"You really are insufferable," Missy fires back, weary, and firms her grip against the Doctor's neck with another involuntary clench of her hand. "What would you like your last words to be?" she murmurs.

"Oh, I've never been very good at last words," the Doctor manages, through Missy's grip. "You try to be, ah, dramatic, poignant maybe, but – "

Missy rolls her eyes and presses hard into the Doctor's throat in just the right way to make her choke. " _This_ is how you ought to go," she pronounces, as the Doctor jerks instinctively for relief. "Knowing you were wrong."

As if the prickles of pain along her skin weren't enough, the way her chest aches pulling in breaths and her hands ache holding the Doctor down, Missy feels the new sensation curl up in her chest and then strike her mind. The Doctor is trying to drop her last words into Missy's mind through telepathic touch.

"Stop," Missy demands again, beyond furious, tears springing to her eyes out of either rage or utter exhaustion, but the Doctor is there anyway.

The Doctor could be using every last bit of her energy to fight back, but _this_ is what she wants. _You know what I'm going to say,_ her voice says in Missy's mind, soft.

Missy slaps her across the face, hard, with her free hand. "Be angry!" she commands, beside herself. "Hate me! What do I have to do to you to break you? _Honestly_."

The Doctor is drifting now, but there's a sense of a smile in what presence of her remains with Missy. _I know you, and I know you're cleverer than this,_ is all the Doctor passes along.

It's too much. She yanks back and pants, on the verge of physical collapse and now unable to deny it. The Doctor coughs and gasps in breaths, looking an absolute, literally bleeding mess, and Missy hates her, she hates her, she hates her. She's shaking as she moves her mouth to press against the redness of the Doctor's neck from the treatment meant to kill her, her hands yanking up the Doctor's shirt to press kisses onto her breasts.

"Missy," the Doctor whispers, but Missy's got her nipple firmly between her teeth and the Doctor shudders out a breath.

"Good girl," Missy murmurs. "I think I remember one small thing from, oh, when we were about two hundred years old, don't you think?" She's shaking, whether from excitement or pain is irrelevant. "In the hills of my father's lands, my poor Doctor, when we were so young, I made you hurt _so bad_ and it drove you so mad you begged for me. Do you remember that?"

"Not how I remember it," the Doctor manages, breathless.

Missy so prefers this to the rest, though something deep inside her knows the Doctor was right, just minutes ago. _You're dying._ "And how do you remember it?" she enunciates.

"I remember I took you." The Doctor's gaze is hot on Missy now. "You played your games, you wanted me, so I took you."

"After begging," Missy clarifies, expression vaguely skeptical.

"After _asking_ ," the Doctor says, all calculated nonchalance, "I took what you so graciously offered."

"We'll just see if this regeneration is any weaker than that one," Missy says, mild, and snatches up the pain receptor device. She keys it down in a simple twist of the dial, and the Doctor shifts back, held by the restraints from going too far.

"Missy," she tries.

Missy ignores this, and undoes the Doctor's trousers, happy to press the device right up against her knickers. "And go," she whispers, pressing the button.

It isn't the same speed, nor the same receptors, as the last time; she just gets jolt after jolt of pain until she's gasping, still not recovered from the attempted strangulation. Missy watches with fascination as the Doctor whispers, "Please," and her hips jerk.

"Good," Missy murmurs, and rocks the device against the Doctor's knickers. "Oh, very good."

"Missy, I'm, I'm," the Doctor says, breathy, helpless.

"I feel you getting wet." Missy isn't about to stop now, though. "One good shag and I'll kill you, how about that?" She leans in. "This one's too pretty to waste completely."

" _Oh._ " The Doctor yanks against her restraints, and her eyes are fixed firmly on Missy's face. Missy takes the opportunity to move in and kiss her, all harshness and teeth, while the Doctor writhes underneath her. Then the Doctor stiffens, and presses a moan into Missy's mouth.

Missy could come on the spot, honestly. "Hm," she says, soft, and bites into the skin of the Doctor's battered neck. "I don't care what anyone says," she whispers, barely audible. "You're going to be mine, you understand that?"

"Sure." The Doctor's voice is throaty, but still very Doctor-y, and Missy might well be losing her mind. She watches the Doctor's face as the masochistic arousal starts to break through her facade; then, the Doctor's expression fixes on Missy again. "Kill me," she says. "Dare you. Right now."

Missy makes a sound of vague complaint. "It's been _so long_ , Doctor."

"I think you can't." It's clear the Doctor is fighting off the same arousal as all that time ago. "I think you feel – "

"Doctor," she retorts. "Please. Be reasonable."

"Let me go." The Doctor's voice wavers as she goes on. "We'll finish this right, then I'll save your life."

Missy laughs, and presses the device firmly against her knickers. "Oh, you truly _are_ delusional," she purrs, unimpressed.

"I love you, you absolute lunatic," the Doctor breathes out in exasperation, and shudders. "Oh, wow."

It's more than Missy was ever ready to hear. She throws the device to the side and has the knife at the Doctor's throat within an instant, her hand shaking desperately as she stares into the Doctor's face.

"Now or never," the Doctor says softly, gaze tight on hers. "Make a choice."

The door opens behind them, and Missy presses the blade against her throat with more force. "Don't move."

"Funny, that," the Corsair's voice comes lightly from behind them, along with the sound of a laser gun priming to fire. "I was about to say the same to you."

Missy's head drops, just slightly.

There are worse ways to die than a shot to the back. She knows that better than anyone, right now.

"Fire," she says, in the best shrewd tone she can muster, "or sod off."

* * *

Admittedly, the Corsair wouldn't have placed a bet on 'Missy sexually menacing the Doctor behind this door', but he supposes it wasn't a huge surprise. The Time Lords as a general rule have never been incredibly fond of guns, but this one is particularly nice – he would know – and makes a very satisfying humming sound as he toys with the settings. "So," he says, with a faint smile, "that's what you want? For me to fire?"

Missy's barely turned to face him. "Do you think I won't kill her before you kill me?" she checks with the Corsair, sardonic.

"If you were going to kill her you'd already have done it," the Corsair says, a bit done with this whole thing, fatal illness aside. "Just let her out and let's go."

"None of you seem to understand," Missy says, rigid now. "I want a Doctor who accepts her place, and I'll kill until I get one."

" _Ha_ ," the Doctor declares, beyond astonishment into sheer confused delight. "What kind of Doctor is that? You'd be bored in one relative year. Maybe less."

The Corsair can't help a vague smile, though his fingertips are white against the metal of the gun from his involuntary grip from pain. "She's got a point."

"What about a new Gallifreyan Empire?" Missy asks, voice dipping low as she looks back down at the Doctor. "I can't do it without you, Doctor, and you know it."

"Ah, that's the plan!" The Doctor is smiling. Of course she is. "Anyway. You'll never get a compliant Doctor, so why try?"

Missy completely snaps. " _Because I have to_."

"That's enough," the Corsair decides, and moves to the side of the marble table. He points the gun at Missy as she trembles, and shoves the barrel against her shoulder. "I've shot you before, I'll shoot you again."

"When did _you_ ever shoot me?" Missy laughs, utterly amused.

He rolls his eyes. "Oh, don't tell me you didn't put it all together yet. This brainwashing has you operating very, very slowly, love."

Missy's look is withering. "Don't call me 'love.'"

The Corsair raises his eyebrows. "Get off of her."

The Doctor watches as Missy climbs off of her, then the Corsair goes on. "Undo the restraints."

"Oh, nonsense," Missy snipes.

"Try me," the Corsair returns, gaze and tone steely.

Missy rolls her eyes, exaggerated, and undoes each of the restraints; she sinks down to the ground, clearly trembling in pain. "You're welcome to try to kill me," she says. "But I don't expect that you have the nerve."

"No one's killing anyone," the Doctor says hastily, as she does up her trousers.

"Are you sure?" the Corsair asks, a bit pointed.

"I came here to save you both." The Doctor stares at him, only the slightest unamused smile on her face now. "I'm not leaving until I do that."

"He saves you, you save us," Missy says in mild disgust, "everyone's saving everyone, how perfect."

"I'd say the Doctor saved herself holding out so long against you," the Corsair points out. "All I did was give you motivation to get up."

The Doctor shakes her head and waves all that off. "Right-o," she says. "Next steps – "

"Knock her out?" The Corsair can't help but eye Missy, who may be in the same pain as he is but is still the Master.

The Doctor grimaces. "Maybe."

"Put me down, you absolute cowards," Missy retorts. "Honestly. What good are you if you can't destroy the enemies who will stop at nothing to kill you?"

The Corsair stares down at Missy, and lifts her chin with the barrel of the gun. Their eyes meet. "You've never put me down before," he says, each syllable crystal clear. "You won't do it now."

There's a moment where recognition flashes in her eyes, and she laughs, overjoyed and astounded. "No! Absolutely not. I won't believe it." The Corsair doesn't move, doesn't react. " _Really_ ," Missy finishes, gaze purely enthralled. "My word, what an idea."

"What?" the Doctor asks, startled. "Come on, do we have time for this? Just – oh, I don't know – bring her along?"

The Corsair isn't quite done with this, though; Missy is still smiling through the pain on her knees below him. "I'm a monster," he says, resolute despite the pain arcing through his veins now. "You're a monster. But neither of us are _their_ monsters. Do you understand?"

"Corsair," the Doctor insists, leaning forward onto the marble altar. "Please."

"Right," the Corsair says, and nudges Missy's face with his gun. "Are you going, or are you staying? Can you hold out against the monster in your head?"

"I never have," Missy says, eyes glittering with fascination. "You know that. You both know that."

"Right," the Corsair repeats, resigns himself to it, and knocks her out with the heft of the gun. He pulls a face, and turns to the Doctor. "The Matrix?"

The Doctor is looking down at Missy now, her expression too blank to be anything less than masking something horrible and heavy. "The Matrix," she agrees.

The Corsair nods, businesslike, and tosses her the sonic screwdriver he retrieves from his pocket. The Doctor starts to smile, and they walk side by side to make their way through the Citadel. "Do you need healing?" he asks, about as warmly concerned as can be expected, considering.

"Nah," the Doctor says, cheerful, as they go. "Could use a new shirt, though."


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to clarify again, in case you didn't peep it in the tags: no one dies permanently here.
> 
> Also, thank you if you made it all the way to this chapter. I know this fic is a bit much at times.

**“For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.” ― G.K. Chesterton**

The Doctor's wrecked Missy's hair, now. It was perfectly pinned and arranged for their hunt for each other across the galaxy, but upon finding her the Doctor insisted upon all the snogging, touching, and everything that had her writhing back against the pillows of their bed.

Missy supposes she can forgive her. It very well might have been worth it.

The Doctor rests against Missy's thigh, breathless and laughing. "Found you," she whispers, affection plain in her eyes.

"I let you find me," Missy returns, her breaths evening now. "I got bored."

"You say that," the Doctor says, tone lilting, "but I know you never get bored. Bored isn't you."

Missy eyes her, casually deadpan. "Only when your pets get involved."

"They're not pets," the Doctor complains, but she's amused anyway. "They're people."

"You're over a thousand years old and they're mayflies," Missy says, with an idle flick of her hand. "I'll never understand why you bother."

The Doctor moves up from between her legs, and curls up around her. "Because I hate to be alone," she says into Missy's mussed hair. "I thought you knew that."

Missy makes a dismissive sound. "My dear Doctor," she says, "you're not alone. You have never been alone."

There's a horrible jolt like she's been impaled through her core, then she's practically a boy again in the red-arced hills of his father's land; he's sharpening a knife as he rests against the Doctor, who rabbits on cheerfully about a book he read overnight.

Finally he loses his patience – affectionately enough – and shifts to climb on top of his friend, straddled on top of him and only earning a sound round of laughter.

"What's so funny?" the Master demands.

"You don't scare me a bit," the Doctor says, all a clear effort to needle him fondly.

He leans in and touches the flat of the blade to the Doctor's face, brushing the smooth metal across his cheek. "Oh?" he asks easily.

"Not a bit," the Doctor repeats, and tilts his chin up, his face nudging up against the knife.

Well, he's asked for it this time.

Pain seeps through him, her, as she starts to come to from where she's been placed in a chair. _I know my name,_ she thinks blearily. A needle jabs into her shoulder, and when she can manage to pry her eyes open, Jara is there.

Deep down she knows the girl shouldn't be a comforting presence, but that doesn't stop her from some gratitude and graciousness as Jara helps her to her feet.

"Let's go," Jara says, gentle.

She must end this. It's the only way to end this. All she has to do is place one foot in front of the other, and kill the Doctor.

Small tasks all.

* * *

The Corsair, at this point, is fairly used to chasing after the Doctor on the way to solve problems. Both of them know the way to the Matrix, but the problem is the collapse of the Citadel – not every pathway is open. He stops dead as they find another collapsed corridor, and the Doctor kicks at the wreckage in a rare show of irritation. "Right," the Doctor declares, in clearly forced brightness. "This way! Not the long way, the long, long way! Don't we love to run, Corsair."

"I have a thing or two I like better," the Corsair says, and raises his eyebrows as the Doctor looks at him with weary amusement.

"Come on," the Doctor says, and runs past the Corsair. "Hold on for me, you can do this!"

"I know," the Corsair calls after her, doing his best to keep up with the strain of the illness that has this insane grip on him.

There wouldn't be space in twenty books to describe all of the things the Corsair has been through. He's lived over a thousand years by now and seen all of the attendant daydreams come true and nightmarish scenarios that come with a lifespan so long. Dying by House had been the most painful thing he had ever experienced, until now.

He pulls himself along with one purpose: to help the Doctor.

Tasha Lem had been a different person than River Song. The Corsair is a different person than Tasha Lem. Hundreds of years will do that. It's not River's attachment to the Doctor that presses him on along her side anymore. It's the Doctor herself.

"All right?" the Doctor asks, a little breathless, as they make their way through side-passages originally meant for cleaning staff only. "Is this weird for you? It's weird for me. I still have the map of this place in my brain after so long."

"Time Lord consciousness," the Corsair says, finding it easy enough to brush past the first question. "Lots of things in your brain."

"You know what I mean! I haven't been here properly in, what, hundreds of years?" She wrinkles her nose when he glances at her. "Well, I spent more time living here for that bit when I was president."

"Still one of the funniest things to ever happen in the history of this place, honestly," the Corsair returns.

"Yeah, I know," the Doctor says, fondly. "Oh, however you got out, I'm so glad you're alive. Even if you're dying. That's why we're going to keep you alive," she clarifies immediately, with a cringe from the awkwardness, then exhales. "As long as you promise not to cause, you know, _big_ drama once this is all over."

He supposes she's not asking how he got out, because she knows he murdered a lot of people on the way out. "You mean Missy," he deduces to her last.

"Well, yeah, that," the Doctor concedes. "But other things, too."

"But mostly her."

She sighs. "I had her… in an all right place. Not necessarily a great person, but a good enough one. I managed it. She had a second chance and she lived up to it. So, I'll give her a third chance. Why not?"

The Corsair releases a ragged sigh. "When are you going to stop making excuses for her?"

"At this point," the Doctor says, an exhausted smile in her voice, "I don't know how to stop."

A loud sound comes from a room they pass, and the Doctor stops dead in her tracks, the Corsair beside her. "Right, let's check that," she says.

The Corsair steels himself to stay calm. "Do we have the time – "

"Shh," she suggests. "I have a feeling about this." She slips into the room and puts her hands up. "I know you're in here," she says cheerfully. "Why don't we have a chat? There's a few things I need to know."

The Corsair moves into the doorway, gun at the ready, but the Doctor hurriedly gestures for him to lower it. There's a long pause, then two Time Lords rise to their feet from behind a lab table, staring with exhausted faces at the Doctor. "If you're with them, we're not interested in any sort of Empire," the older one breaks the silence with; he's doing far better than his young compatriot at staying calm. 

"Not at all," the Doctor says instantly. "No, no, no."

"It's you, isn't it," the younger one says, gawking openly at her. "It worked, their plan, they managed to bring the Doctor here after all."

"Who?" the Doctor fires back, eyes on him now.

The older Time Lord gestures hurriedly to dismiss that. "We were forced to hide on our way to bring supplies back to those of us hiding in the outskirts. Enough of us have decided not to go along with the plans of the Empire."

"Good move," the Doctor says without missing a beat. "Right, you know who I am, you know I'm going to solve this, I'm comfortable making that promise, so let's just get one thing straight, who is the _them_ who brought me here?"

The older Time Lord clears his throat. "The remaining Council, the two of them, they generated her from the Matrix," he says, his voice heavy. "They wanted you to help us rebuild, Doctor, and they thought no one had a better chance of finding the Doctor than the Master."

"They brought Missy back _just to find me_?" the Doctor demands. "I know the High Council makes bad decisions constantly but that's – fine, fine, fine," she says, rapid-fire, with a gesture. "Then someone hijacked Missy. And the Corsair here. That's what you're telling me?"

"The Imperial Movement," the younger Time Lord offers.

"It's him, isn't it," the Corsair says, with no inflection, no real doubt.

"No one knows who's at the lead, besides Missy," the older Time Lord says without missing a beat. "But the Empire is attempting to rise, and they want the Doctor to help lead the way. They've made no secret of that."

"Ugh," the Doctor says, and drops her head back slightly as she absorbs this. "To the Matrix, some investigation and sonicking and maybe I can sort you both out," she adds to the Corsair. "So. Thanks!" She waves to the two Time Lords.

There's a brief silence, then the younger one speaks up. "Can we have your gun?"

The Corsair looks down at his gun, his stomach clenched in pain as well as unwelcome trepidation. "Well – "

"Oh, give it to them, they need to get out of here," the Doctor suggests, and the Corsair exhales sharply as he moves to hand the gun off. "Great," she says, frantically cheery. "Matrix! Now!"

"Bye," the Corsair says, a little dry, as the Doctor seizes his hand and pulls him through the last few corridors until the room housing the Matrix opens with a gesture of her sonic.

As they move to the screens, it's only then that he realizes that this is very, very bad for him. Sure, the Doctor is likely to save his life, but he desperately needs to keep her from his entry in the Matrix. He can't deal with that conversation now.

"Look at Missy's," he says abruptly, as she starts to open up the files.

"I'm scanning both of yours," the Doctor says, not looking up as she speeds up the process with a flash of her sonic. "Then I'll extrapolate to see if it's infected any of the others, maybe this Imperial Movement – "

"Doctor," the Corsair tries, moving closer to her side.

"Sorry, bit distracted." The Doctor's eyes are fixed on the screens as data flickers rapidly across them, then there's a dead silence as they both see the result of the first diagnostic: flashing red, the warning of the virus he'd used over a thousand years ago. She looks over at the Corsair, expression measured, then says, "Do we have the time for this?"

The Corsair has no idea what he's supposed to say to that, or what he'll ever say to explain himself. This isn't anything he'd ever expected to deal with. The Doctor was never supposed to touch the Matrix again. "Not really."

"Right," the Doctor says, clearly a touch more panicked, and affixes her gaze back onto the screens, her face a little pink.

"Doctor." Maybe some reassurance is necessary. "I'm still a friend."

"You always have been," she says levelly.

"Keep that in mind." The pain rakes over him again, and he loses control for just an instant, slamming a fist down on the nearest unused console, pacing away. He ignores the clear concern radiating off of the Doctor and tries to get himself back in place.

He's held out against so much worse than this, hasn't he?

He sinks onto the floor, resting his back against the wall, silent, wishing he had a gun to hold onto. He daydreams, as she skims over files, of laser muskets and heists gone wrong, a lifetime that was his own and not remotely the Doctor or the Master's, then she speaks.

"Didn't bother to hide their fingerprints."

Dread flashes harsh in him. "Who is it?"

"It tracks back to Missy's entry," the Doctor says, and he looks up to meet her gaze. An unhappy smile flickers over her face. "Any one of them could've done this. Any one of them across their timeline. She could've even done it to herself."

"Do you believe that?" the Corsair asks, soft.

"Not for a minute," she says. "But we won't know until he shows his face, now will we?"

That's a problem for another time. "What can we do to stop it?"

The Doctor's expression is one he knows well, the pained, _I should've been able to fix it_ self-deprecating half-smile. "Regenerate." She pauses. "That's it. It's coded into this body of yours, that body of hers. I'd have to get you into gene therapy in the next two hours to keep your biological systems from completely shutting down, and I'm not sure that would stop the brainwashing. Oh, I hate not being sure," she adds, rapidfire, then flashes a smile, more wry. "Think we've got a chance at that?"

"Maybe," the Corsair hazards. "If we get her, neutralize her, get into the TARDIS – "

"Maybe," the Doctor cuts him off with. "We should find her."

He smiles faintly. "She might find us first."

"Even better!" She claps her hands together. "Do you want to force a regeneration before we go?"

"I've never been good at that," the Corsair admits. "Always the last minute for me."

"Same, really," the Doctor says, and looks at him for a long moment, expression more calculating than he's used to seeing on any of the Doctor's faces. "Why did you do it?"

She can't seem to ask the question right out. _Who are you? Are you a threat?_ "I am a Time Lord," he says, measured, and pushes himself up. "Complicated. I'll tell you on the way."

"You'll tell me now." There's a coolness in her voice now, and her eyebrows lift pointedly. 

It's an _I won't take no for an answer_ expression if he's ever seen one. He presses his hands into fists, wishing again for a gun to grip for some sense of security – frankly, too much a holdover from River Song, that one. He measures his words carefully. This is one of the most important sentences he'll ever say.

It seems obvious now that he thinks about it. "Spoilers," he says, his hearts racing as he looks into her face, not just from the pain now crackling its way through his bloodstream.

The Doctor stares at him as it all, obviously, clicks into place for her. Then, something like relief only briefly crosses her face, before she sets her expression back into something a bit more like concerned skepticism. "Think we're actually synced for once," she says. "Come along already."

He dares to smile, and follows her at a run. "Where are we going?" he asks, raising his voice.

She barely glances back at him. "Where they want us to go!"

Sounds like the usual plan. "Why did you make me give up my gun?"

"Oh, like you can't get another!"

That's a point. "You think they're tracing me?" he dares ask, close behind her now.

"I'm counting on it," the Doctor says, breathlessly mock-cheery. "Let's find somewhere to pretend to get trapped, hey?"

"You never change," the Corsair says, a little fond.

Her tone is desert dry. "You do."

He grins. If he survives this, this particular problem isn't over by a long shot, but at least she trusts him as of this moment.

That's more than he's ever deserved.

* * *

Jara only has to gently pull Missy behind her, tracker in hand, for about five minutes before they find the Doctor and the Corsair (gun in hand, of course) in a room littered with unconscious Imperial Guards. Missy has kept silent since the Imperials found her again, in her best effort to try to get her mind straight.

She had every opportunity to do it. She should've done it.

Missy looks into the Doctor's eyes as they move into the room, and all that's there is plain, open worry. "Go," Jara says, tender enough, and pushes her lightly forward. Missy slips the laser screwdriver into her hand, mustering a smirk, and stalks towards the Doctor. The Corsair tries to move between them, but the Doctor gestures him away.

"Where is he?" the Doctor says, instead of the usual attempts to reason her down. Missy shakes her head, but the Doctor presses. "You know who I mean. Where is he? I need him, I need to know how he did this, we have so little time – "

"Missy," Jara says firmly from behind her.

Something inside Missy cracks, a horrible sensation through her mind, and she lashes out at the Doctor with the laser screwdriver, more an instinctive reaction than anything. Her shaky hands ensure she misses, and the Doctor circles around her, keeping on. "I know you don't want to do this," the Doctor presses. "I know you're stronger than whatever programming he put in your head. So I want you to tell me. Who is it, and where is he?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Missy snaps off, rigid in tone and body, and keeps one eye on the Corsair as she slashes at the Doctor again.

"You're looking at our Empress," Jara says mildly from her spot near the partially-shattered doorway. "You should surrender. Bow down. Join our movement."

"Joining isn't really my thing," the Doctor says easily, gaze still on Missy. "I do what I do, you're too young to know that, I think. Hey, Corsair, am I a joiner?"

"I think we're talking too much," the Corsair says from the corner.

"One regeneration," Missy says, just loudly enough for the Doctor to hear. "One little regeneration, and we can finally be together, is that not what you've wanted?"

"A Gallifreyan Empire is a terrible idea," the Doctor says, blunt but with a laugh in her voice. "You really think our people can be trusted with all of space and time? With you at the head?" She shakes her head; this time the laser screwdriver just barely scrapes her arm and slices into her skin. She slaps a hand over it, but still paces around Missy. "Don't you realize you're being _handled_ by this girl?" she presses. "You're not an Empress, you're a means to an end."

Missy falters where she stands, fumbling to stand; her vision swims. "Soon," she grinds out, "you will regret what you're saying."

The Doctor is at her side as the laser screwdriver drops out of her hand. Missy closes her eyes tightly, the mortification near as intense as the pain, and the Doctor's hand is cool against her warm cheek. "I have one chance to save you from all this," she says, softly, to Missy. "Will you take my hand and come with me?"

"When will you learn, Doctor," Missy murmurs back, tone acrid, "that I will not submit to you?"

"I'm not asking for submission." The Doctor barely flinches as the Corsair starts firing at Jara, who's coming at him. Missy ignores it, too; they have their own business. "I'm offering you another chance," the Doctor carries on, gentle. "These people have literally poisoned you. I can save you if you give me a chance."

Missy knows better. She knows in her hearts that she's not going to make it to the TARDIS, to whatever hospital bed the Doctor means to drop her into. She knows that this endless well of agony is going to flood through every one of her cells and force her to become someone new.

She already doesn't trust this new Master, the one who lingers right in the wings waiting for her to die. But she doesn't have a choice.

Missy looks into the Doctor's face. For one moment, it's as though they see each other clearly for the first time in at least a thousand years, unclouded by fears and rabid desires. Then, Missy says it. "Put me down, Doctor."

"What?" the Doctor hisses, utter fear flashing in her face.

"You can't save the day," Missy says, tone brittle. "So put me down. I'll regenerate. I'll be free from all this."

The Doctor falls silent, then the Corsair grunts from across the room and Jara screams as the gun fires. The Doctor's head shoots up and she shouts, "What have you done?"

"Incapacitation," the Corsair says, clearly restraining a sigh. "Relax."

"I can't relax," the Doctor fires back, showing just the slightest signs of strain.

"He hasn't done enough," a voice says from the doorway. "As usual." Missy sinks to the ground completely, onto her side, her skirts spread across her legs in a pleated mess.

"I knew it," Missy hears the Doctor say, shaky voice forced steady, before Missy drifts into another agony-induced dream.

* * *

The Doctor doesn't move as a flurry of movement happens after the Master speaks: Jara shouts, "My Lord, please!" before the Corsair shoots at the Master, and the Master fires the tissue compression device at Jara as he steps neatly out of the way of the Corsair's blast.

"Let's have an honest chat," the Master suggests, straightening his collar as he contemplates the scene. "Corsair, I suggest you mind your own business. This is an adult conversation."

"I'm not leaving," the Corsair snipes, clearly worrying anyway.

The Doctor ignores all that. "This was never about killing me." The Master's gaze flicks back to her. "This was about torturing me. Siccing Missy on me to cut me up. Making me watch her die." She doesn't miss a beat before going on. "You did this to _yourself_? This is a whole new level of psychopath for you."

The Master gestures, dismissive. "She wants you to put her down," he says. "So put her down."

"If you tell me what you did, I can save her," the Doctor says pointedly. "So tell me, I'm sure I can find something here to – "

"Oh, you're so _dull_ ," the Master cuts her off with, openly complaining. "Save them, save them, save them. Have you never pulled a trigger in your life?"

"Not my style." The Doctor looks back down to Missy, who seems to be drifting in and out of consciousness. "Corsair! How are you managing?" she calls over to him.

"Dying," the Corsair offers with a grimace, "but nothing new there."

"Well, I'm glad someone's being reasonable about all this," the Master says mildly. "Anyway. The point is, I want to see you pull that trigger. Just put her out of her misery, or she'll die in horrible agony. Can you do it?"

"Why?" The Doctor meets the Master's gaze and holds it. "Why do you feel the need to do this?"

"Do it," Missy whispers from beside her, and scrapes the laser screwdriver from the floor to press it against the Doctor's knees, as close to her hands as she can get. The Doctor trembles, fear, anger, despair all flooding her in a horrible instant before she resolves herself.

"I'm here," the Doctor says, soft, to Missy, and touches her hair.

"No." The Corsair bites the word out. "No, you can't be here when she regenerates."

The Master starts to laugh. "Oh, good, someone's paying attention! Tell the class, now, my dear."

It sinks into the Doctor's mind in a cold, awful instant. She looks down at Missy, who's trembling, her fingers fisted and white, then looks back up at the Master.

"You know I couldn't." The Doctor hates this awful numbness. He's won. He knows her too well, and this incarnation has been one of the best at pinpointing her weaknesses.

"We need to go." The Corsair is forcing strength into his voice, and the Doctor looks up at him, her throat tightening as she sees him using every last bit of strength to hold himself firm.

"If he'll let us go," the Doctor says, tone as level as she can get it.

"Oh, well, you know," the Master says easily, "I'd _like_ that Gallifreyan Empire with you by my side, but if you'd rather run away from the opportunity of a lifetime, that's your decision."

"I run away from opportunities of a lifetime all the time." That's sort of her thing. "You know I've never wanted to rule anyone."

The Master draws a device from his pocket and fiddles with it, all casual. "Even if it saves your people?" he asks.

The Doctor looks between Missy and the Master, sure to wait until she's a bit calmer to speak. "You'd save their lives."

"Unacceptable terms," the Corsair cuts in.

"Oh, you have always been so _bothersome_ ," the Master snipes at the Corsair. "Why do I keep you around?"

The Corsair shrugs. "For the game," he says. "Wouldn't you prefer a game to an empire?"

The Master considers that, and laughs briefly. "He's got a point," he says to the Doctor; she's still soothing Missy. "Now, you have to make a decision. Put her down and stay here at my side, try to save all these Time Lords here and now and run across this version of me just after my regeneration without my personal protection – I should let you know he's going to be _terribly_ upset – or _run_. What do you think?"

The Doctor knows she's trapped in this game. She's not stupid. She's never been stupid. "I'll run if you run," she says, a clear, even challenge.

A smile breaks across the Master's face. "That's the best idea I've heard in ages," he says. "I'll leave these Imperial idiots to their own devices. You have fun with, ah, that." He nods to Missy. "I'll see you soon, my dear Doctor." He glances across the room at the Corsair. "I know where to find you."

It isn't clear who he's speaking to there, but it doesn't matter, because the Doctor is curled against Missy. "I'll see you soon," she says, soft. "Try to remember. I love you."

"Do it. _Please._ " Missy's voice is weak, soft, and the Doctor blinks the start of tears from her eyes furiously as she drags herself to her feet. There's the sound of a teleport, and the Corsair grunts in irritation; when the Doctor turns to face the doorway, the Master is gone.

"We have to go," the Doctor makes herself say.

"Doctor," Missy begs, and her fingers flex, beginning to glow golden.

"Go," the Corsair says rapidly, and drags himself forward, seizing the Doctor's hand to pull her away.

The Doctor knows it's what he wants, but a tear or two slips down her face anyway.

There was no way to win.

* * *

The Corsair dies in the TARDIS med bay. It's the first time he's done so in a relatively peaceful situation, or at least a post-chaotic one, and the agony splits off into the still painful relief of regeneration. It's an effort to sit up, but the Doctor is there when he looks up.

"Pretty girl," the Doctor says. Her smile doesn't reach her eyes. It might not for some time.

She rakes her hand over her body – curves for days, fuller on top than below, that's lovely – then over her head, to find long, lovely hair. "Oh, I like this," she muses, and pauses heavily as she remembers this voice, this hair, this regeneration from over a thousand years ago. Timelines. Ridiculous.

The Doctor carries on, all cheerful. "Where's the snake?"

The Corsair looks at her, a little pointed. "You don't have to play like it didn't happen," she says. "It's all right to be – "

"Corsair." The Doctor's tone goes sharper, her gaze wounded. "I don't want to talk about it."

The Corsair backs off a bit. "Anything else we need to talk about?" she asks.

"We should change you out of those clothes," the Doctor says mildly, clearly trying to brush off the attempt at a conversation.

"Doctor," she says, mock-echoing the Doctor's own use of her name.

The Doctor looks at her frankly, then softens. "I was never sure about Tasha Lem," she says. "You never told me honestly. You _were_ Tasha Lem, weren't you?"

"One hundred years of Church nonsense," the Corsair confirms.

"Ugh." The Doctor wrinkles her nose. "So, wait. You – "

"Yes," the Corsair says, leaving the rest to her imagination.

The Doctor gestures, her eyes full of astonishment. "But you – the Church, Kovarian – "

"Stable time loop." The Corsair raises her eyebrows, then sighs, brushing a hand over her new face. Regeneration is still strange, even after all these years. "I'm not her anymore, Doctor."

"I never thought you were," the Doctor says abruptly.

"Still." The Corsair doesn't meet her gaze, even as the Doctor looks at her. "Still, I…"

"Corsair." The Doctor's voice goes soft.

She could cry. How embarrassing. It's probably post-regeneration syndrome. "I need my TARDIS."

"On our way to it," the Doctor says, still gentle. She goes to sit next to the Corsair, then presses a light kiss to her cheek. "Hey," she whispers.

Damn. It perks a smile on her face. "Hey what?"

"I'm terrible at this," the Doctor admits right off, "still, was I ever good at this? Anyway, did you want to try this body out, or what?"

What a question. "On your shooting range?"

"I missed you." The Doctor's wholly genuine in the moment, and she rests against the Corsair's shoulder. "I missed the Corsair, I missed River, I missed you all."

The Corsair's hearts are too full. "I'm here."

"Great," the Doctor says, sounding utterly relieved. "Wardrobe first?"

She can't help but laugh, and, oh, this regeneration's laugh is _great_ , she loves it. "I thought you were planning to get my clothes off."

"Well, we can pick what you put on after," the Doctor says with nervous brightness.

"These are a bit big," the Corsair supposes of her last body's clothes. They're sweaty, too. She ignores all that and touches the Doctor's cheek, then, drawing her in for a brief kiss. It's a nice kiss, and she wonders if the Doctor thinks of River's insinuating kisses, desperate to keep the Doctor's attentions. It's not like that. She's not River anymore.

That's not a bad thing. It's not a good thing. It's just the way it goes.

She's herself, now, no one else's.

* * *

They're all sitting across from her in Graham's place with these looks on their faces, and everything about this situation tells the Doctor she's doomed to a Conversation.

"You need to tell us the truth," Yaz says, eyes full of sharp concern.

"Please," Ryan says, more of a suggestion this time.

"We're serious," Graham cuts in, leaning in as well. "You don't seem all right."

The Doctor takes a deep breath, releases a long sigh, and presses her face into her hands. 

"It's a long story," she says.

"We've got time," Ryan says, firm, and she meets his eyes, unable to keep from a little smile.

"Right." Where is she supposed to start?

She thinks of the wreck of Gallifrey, a story she can't possibly bookend, a story she must go back and solve, as soon as her TARDIS trusts her to manage it.

"I'm a Time Lord," comes out of her mouth instead of anything particularly clever. At least it's honest. She commits. "A little shy of two thousand years old."

"Two _thou_ – " Graham blurts out, but Ryan nudges him in the ribs.

"So. Alien. Used to be a man. More than a few times." This is easy. She can do this.

She can admit to a lot. It's a _very_ long story, one that should entertain them for more than a bit. Maybe then they won't ask about why she can't really smile these days.

* * *

The Corsair smooths her hair, preening just for a moment in a compact mirror, as her vortex manipulator updates. Updates are stupid. She hates updates. All she wants to do is record this message and get out of this century.

She used to love the 52nd century so much. Now it's so old hat. Meh.

The vortex manipulator chirps. _Finally._ She puts away the compact, snaps the manipulator onto her wrist, and starts to record. Her voice is smooth as she starts.

"You don't know my face, but I know your name. I know your crimes. I know who you love and who you want dead at all costs."

It isn't easy to keep a poker face. Of course, she knows she has to. She knows she did.

"'What Desmond underestimated, what he would always underestimate, was the lengths a father would go to find and protect his child. A father would raise armies and take on all comers to bring her back home. A father wouldn't care for revenge. He would only care that she would live a full and happy life with those she loved.'"

_Don't smile._

"Amy wrote that for you. Do you remember the night she read it to you? Ovaltine in your favorite mug, her showing you her first gray hairs?"

Poor River. Poor, poor River Song. It's been over a thousand years, but part of her still remembers the pain of that day.

"So, now that we've got through that. You need to promise me something." _You have no choice, love._ She steels herself. "You can't kill her."

She flicks it off, then sinks down to a seat at the vanity in the lush bedroom as the door opens. He enters the room and moves to her, his fingers in her hair within a moment, and she closes her eyes at the touch.

"I'm so glad you came," the Master says, and nearly sounds genuine. He is, in his way, painfully sincere. "Now, you must let me know. Is this a social call, or should I be prepared for a game?"

"A bit of both," the Corsair says, tone dipping low. "What were you hoping for?"

"Oh, everything," he murmurs, and his fingers tighten in her hair to yank it back and catch her gaze.

"Typical," she says, faux-dismissive, then smirks.

His fingers trace along the edges of the ouroboros only partially visible on her shoulderblade in this dress, the whole circle, as he knows its lines so well. "We've got so many regenerations to burn, love," he says, soft, eyes full of nightmarish fascination. "Why don't we get a start?"

She laughs. This regeneration's laugh is just fantastic.

"Once, for now," she warns, and taps his hand lightly to chide him. "I don't want you to get tired of me."

"Hm," he says, vaguely amused, and releases her hair to guide her to her feet. "One go this whole time? How unfortunate."

"One go at _a game_ ," the Corsair clarifies, rolling her eyes with another laugh. "I know you're insatiable otherwise."

"Guilty," he says, mock-cheerful, then seizes her by the throat to shove her onto the bed, knee between her thighs; she closes her eyes in fluttering relief as he manhandles her, shifts her to her stomach, takes her all hard and painful.

As usual, the game of chaos they play in the world outside can wait. For now, it's just her fingernails dug into his flesh and his teeth in her skin, as it should be, as it will be for as long as they can last in this universe.

* * *

The Doctor perches on the crest overhanging the quarry on Gallifrey, feet dangling over the edge. She knows what's coming. She's fine. She meant to do this, she really did.

He's there within a few moments, silent as he approaches, then sinks down to sit beside her, contemplating the dull colors of the quarry beneath.

"You ended my Empire," the Master says, noting it more than anything.

"I didn't do much, there were enough Time Lords who just wanted to rebuild and mind their own business," the Doctor says, mild.

"It was a boring idea anyway," he supposes. "Time Lords aren't built for Empiring. Requires a lot of mind control. Which I like well enough, but – "

"Is that why we're here?" the Doctor interrupts, not particularly fussed, though.

"No." The Master pauses. "Why are we here?"

The Doctor musters the feeling in her hearts, that's been swelling in her chest for too long. "I'm sorry," she says. "I'm sorry about the Timeless Child. I'm sorry that I didn't do what you wanted that day, that I didn't spare you all that pain. I never meant…"

She trails off. Of all the people to apologize right now, he should have the most to offer, but hers feel like the biggest faults in the room now. Well, the quarry. Whatever.

"It's too late," he says, after the pause stretches out long enough. He seems to mean it. "I am what I am, now."

"You said that before," she starts.

"Ah, the Vault, the Vault, it's always the same with you," he says, clearly losing a twinge of what little patience he has for her. "A one-time thing, didn't you realize?"

"Missy wouldn't kill me." The Doctor pauses. "Neither would you."

He laughs, astounded. "I've tried to kill you _so many times_ now, Doctor – "

"All ways you knew wouldn't succeed," she returns without missing a beat. "All things you knew I could escape."

He scoffs. "Oh, you far overestimate my opinion of you."

"Do I?" she fires back. "Kill me, Master." She gestures. "I'm here, I'm unarmed, I'm at your mercy. Do it."

"You don't mean that," the Master challenges her.

"I knew it," the Doctor says, watching him intently. "Thousands of years and you're still sitting in the hills of your father's lands with me, aren't you?"

His mouth sets. "This is a trap."

She starts to smile. "Not a physical one."

"This is a waste of my time," he retorts, and starts to push himself up. "Up, let's sort this out."

She laughs, now. "It's always grand showdowns with you! Why don't you ever just talk to me?"

"All you do is talk," the Master snipes. "It's irritating."

"I'm waiting for you to kill me," the Doctor makes clear. "Are you telling me you came here unarmed?"

There's a long silence; she can feel his anxiety ratcheting up. "Enough," he snaps off. "Get up. Honestly."

She shrugs and pushes herself to her feet, considering him with arms crossed. "If you could do anything, here, with me," she says, "what would you do?"

"I think you know," the Master says, gaze fixed on her now.

"Don't be a coward then."

He moves towards her, then seizes her by the waist and the back of the neck to haul her tight to him, and kisses her fiercely on the mouth. The scruff on his face brushes against hers in a not-unpleasant way, she thinks; it's terrifying, but it's _him_ , and there's something so horribly comforting about knowing that one particular hellfire burns completely for you, for thousands of years, for eternity.

He pushes her away. "Go," he commands. "Or I'll kill you."

A smile plays on her mouth again. "Sure."

"Go," he grinds out, and shoves her again. She shrugs and walks away, offering a little wave without turning around.

These wars will be endless. But they're theirs.


End file.
